AND EXPLORATION. 169 have begun, could not have accomplished what he did if 1788-93 Lawson, Blaxland, and Wentworth had not succeeded in finding a way for him over the Blue Mountains four years before he started from Bathurst Plains to trace the Mac- quarie and the Lachlan. Nor again could they have per- formed that task had it not been for the exertions of those i*e laboure ofourprede- who went before them in opening up the country to the oessore, banks of the Nepean and the Hawkesbury. Even the men who absolutely failed in their attempts to cross the mountains — Bass, Bareiller, and Caley, to say nothing of those who preceded them — may be said to have materially assisted Lawson and his party in solving the problem which had defied their own painful efforts. It was in this spirit that Forrest, who crossed from Perth to Adelaide round the Great Australian Bight, acknowledged that '^ the records of and their Ejre^s expedition were of the greatest service to me, by at *""^ least enabling me to guard against a repetition of the terrible sufferings he endured."*
- Forrest, Explorations in Australia, p. 11.
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