Mountains. The attempt had been unsuccessfully made by several early colonists; amongst others, by the brave Surgeon Bass.
The last and successful effort was made by three gentlemen whose names are still well known in the colony—William Wentworth, son of the D'Arcy Wentworth who took an active part in the deposition of Governor Bligh, one of the earliest free colonists, himself destined in various ways to occupy a distinguished place in the annals of the colony; Lieutenant Lawson, afterwards one of the greatest land and stock owners; and Gregory Blaxland, one of the first members of the Legislative Council of New South Wales.
With incredible toil and hardships, they effected a passage across a chain of mountains clothed with dense timber and brushwood, and intersected by a succession of ravines, which presented extraordinary difficulties, not so much from their height as from their precipitous character. At the foot of the opposite side of the mountains, an easy journey led to
Bathurst Plains in 1852.
Bathurst Plains, the finest pasture country the colonists had yet seen, far exceeding even the famous Cow Pastures on the Nepean. It is to this country, the discovery of Messrs. Wentworth and Lawson, that the gold-diggers are now streaming in thousands, but not clambering up
