1805.] 



Notes and Correspondence. 



359 



by which I wanted to come and 

 return home to satisfy myself if 

 coal existed there, I was told was 

 uninhabited, and that I could not 

 find it without a guide ; so I en- 

 gaged a black fellow, and a tre- 

 mendous journey we had of it. I 

 have satisfied myself that coal will 

 be there, but must examine another 

 place before I can tell whether there 

 is a good seam of coal. I have 

 found the lower coal, which is in- 

 ferior, and cannot yet tell whether 

 it will be near enough from the 

 edge of the coal basin for the next 

 excellent seam of coal to come in 

 above it. The coal measures I 

 find gradually increase in their 

 thickness from the edge of the 

 coal basin towards the centre of 

 it. and the Sydney or Clarkes 

 Hawkesbury sandstone rests on 

 the coal measures near the edge of 

 the basin, whilst near the centre of 

 it, it is 900 feet from the top, coal 

 sandstone and shales of a different 

 nature to the Hawkesbury sand- 

 stone intervening in the 900 feet ; 

 and it has always been supposed by 

 other geologists that it would al- 

 ways be 900 to 1,000 feet from the 

 Hawkesburjr sandstone to the first 

 coal, whilst I a,m certain that I can 

 find it only thirty miles from 

 Sydney at a depth of 150 to 200 

 feet ; but if 1 go to twenty-eight 

 miles, and find the top coal coming 

 in, it might be 400 feet. 



The last journey was one of the 

 worst I ever had, and I am now 

 suffering with a touch of rheuma- 

 tism in my leg from it. The 

 first day we went fifty miles on 

 horseback in a hot wind, and the 

 next day forty-five, arriving at 

 Windsor. Went from there to 

 Richmond, up the river Grouse, 

 towards the boundary of the county 

 of Cork. It is considered about 

 one of the worst places in New 

 South Wales to travel. We tried 

 to take horses up it, but after 

 cutting their feet, we sent all back 

 but the pack-horse, and after going 

 six miles up, we had to leave the 

 pack-horse tied to a tree, take our 



provisions and a blanket, and crawl 

 over and under logs, and jump from 

 stone to stone. Well, about 7 p.m. 

 that night, we lighted a fire in a 

 most dismal and uncomfortable 

 place, had our beds made of hard 

 sandstone, with a few rushes and 

 ferns cut and thrown over it, and a 

 ledge of a rock to shelter us. The 

 river having rocks on each side of it 

 500 to 600 feet high. To our 

 horror, at 3 a.m. it commenced to 

 rain, and we held a consultation 

 whether we should go farther up 

 the river to seek the coal, and dry 

 our clothes at the fire at night, or 

 return. Well, we decided to go on, 

 and after going about four miles, 

 which took us five hours, and finding 

 the river getting more impassable, 

 we thought we could not possibly 

 get to the coal in one or two days ; 

 and as we were wet through to the 

 skin, we decided to retrace our 

 steps. When we reached the horse, 

 we found that he had got frightened, 

 and cut his knee ; and when we 

 came to take him home, we won- 

 dered how we had brought him so 

 far, and thought he would have 

 killed himself ; and we have partly 

 ruined him. It was very lucky for 

 us that we just managed to get to a 

 house when quite dai'k, or 1 should 

 have had a worse touch of rheuma- 

 tism than I now have. I little 

 thought when I used to see the 

 gipsies at Aspull Moor that I 

 should ever go about in that 

 way. I was going home when it 

 cleared up, so I thought I would 

 go up another river, which proved 

 to be ten times worse than the 

 previous one, and although we only 

 went eight miles up it, and wished 

 to return that way, we preferred 

 walking forty miles round to going 

 the eight miles to where we had left 

 our horses. The man I had with 

 me being an Irishman, and not used 

 to such journeys, got very surly 

 when he saw me going up dif- 

 ferent hills, and I had to give 

 him a little of my mind about it ; 

 and the riding made him very sore. 

 The day we were so wet, I was 



