The first day's work gained for them five miles, but at the end of their toil they had to retrace their weary way back to the last night's camp. The next day they cleared the track for only two miles further ahead; so much time being wasted in walking backwards and forwards to the work. There was no grass amongst the scrub that encompassed them, and when, on Monday, they determined to move the camp equipage forward, they packed the horses with as much cut-grass as they could put on them. This amounted to, according to Lawson's diary, about two hundred pounds weight for each horse, which, in addition to their ordinary loads, must have been a very weighty packload for uphill work. However, according to Blaxland, "they stood it well." They obtained no water for their animals that night, and what they wanted for their own requirements had to be painfully carried up a cliff about six hundred feet in height. On the succeeding day they suddenly came on what at first appeared to be an impassable barrier. The ridge which they had so pertinaciously followed, had, for the last mile narrowed and dwindled down into a sharp razor-backed spur, flanked with rugged and abrupt gullies on either slope. Across this narrow way now stretched a perpendicularly-sided mass of rock, which seemed effectually to bar their path. The removal of a few large boulders however, revealed an aperture which, after some labour, they widened sufficiently to allow the pack-horses to squeeze through. Once through they began to ascend what they estimated to be the second tier of the Mountains. Shortly after they left camp that morning they came on a pile of stones, or cairn, evidently the work of some European, which they attributed to Bass. They were much elated at the thought that they had now passed beyond the limit of any previous attempt.* *[Footnote.] This cairn was afterwards named Cayley's Repulse by Governor Macquarie: but recent research goes to show that Cayley followed the valley of the Grose, and was many miles to the north of where the cairn was found. According to Flinders, Bass was not on the high ridge traversed by Blaxland and party. They could now look round with triumph on the panorama spread beneath their view, and from the superior elevation which they had obtained, they took the bearings of several noticeable landmarks that they had seen before only from the flat country. The labour of cutting a path each day for the horses for the next day's march had, however, still to be continued; but the crest of the ridge was again wider, though the gullies on each side were as steep as before. That night, in camp, the dogs were uneasy throughout the night, and several times gave tongue and aroused the sleepers, tired with their day's work. From what they found afterwards, they had good reason to believe that the blacks had been lurking around meditating an attack.