146 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



was equivocally known thereafter as the Rum Hospital.* 

 Some adjacent public-houses were owned by the 

 syndicate. 



With his high connections young Wentworth readily 

 found official emploj^ment in a colony of officials. In 

 1811, at the age of eighteen years, he was appointed 

 Deputy Provost-Marshal. But also, with his great 

 talents, he soon found employment for himself, and in 

 1813, when only tAventy, he accompanied Gregory Blax- 

 land and Lieutenant Lawson in the first successful 

 escalade of the Blue Mountains, when the plains of 

 Bathurst and the valleys of the Murrumbidgee and its 

 tributaries were thrown open to an invading army of 

 pastoralists. 



The younger Wentworth was destined to greatness. 

 While still an undergraduate at Cambridge he unsuc- 

 cessfully competed for the prize for a poem on Australia, 

 which equalled most prize poems in the splendour of 

 its versification, and surpassed them all in reality and 

 in passion bred of an intimate acquaintance \Aith the 

 things described. Returning to his native land, he 

 soon began to take an active interest in public affairs. 

 We shall see how prominent and how glorious was the 

 part that he played on certain great public questions, 

 while his policy on others gradually alienated from him 

 the popularity he had honourably won. 



In 1819, while he still resided in England, he published 

 his great work on Australia, which long held a place 

 as the first book adequate to the subject that had been 

 published. There a diatribe against Chaplain Samuel 

 Marsden was relieved by an eulogium of Governor Mac- 

 quarie for his behaviour to the Emancipists. In 1824 

 he returned to New South Wales in company with Dr. 

 Ward ell, where they practised as barristers — the only 

 ones in the Colony, and they enjoyed a lucrative practice. 

 He started a newspaper, which was a scourge of offi- 

 cialism. He set up as the leader of the Emancipists, 

 and plotted the overthrow of Governor Darling ; and, 

 * Account, i. 141-2.' 



