OUE COAL AND COAL PORTS. 127 



the sea. My first idea, on the occasion of this obstructing cross 

 range presenting itself, was to tunnel through it so as to make a 

 passage by the downward northerly dip of the surface, and by 

 the falls of the Port Hacking Creek to continue my course to 

 nearly the level of Port Hacking itself. Prom this idea I was 

 deterred by the confident assertions of two very intelligent gen- 

 tlemen that the attempt would be utterly futile, and I therefore 

 gave it up ; and in my letter to the Herald with details of my 

 then expedition I disposed of the suggestion of tunnelling the 

 Bulge Eange as being wholly worthless in its consequences, if 

 attempted. 



Happily, however, I was subsequently encouraged to renew 

 the idea by the forcible remarks of the Surveyor General, who 

 had reason to believe, partly through Lord Audley's survey of 

 this creek in 1862, that such line up Port Hacking Creek could, 

 by aid of tunnelling here and there, be made available for the 

 purpose. Mr. Justice Hargrave also wrote to me on the same 

 . subject in part, and I then promised to give attention to the 

 suggestions. It is therefore to the intelligence of these gentle- 

 men that much of the subsequent success is owing, and most 

 specially so to the Surveyor Greneral, to whom the honour is due 

 of first drawing attention to the feasibility of obtaining a rail- 

 way direct up this, our Endeavour rivulet. 



On hearing that the petition for a preliminary survey had been 

 so promptly granted, and as I was courteously invited to accom- 

 pany the engineer, I sought the assistance of a guide in Mr. 

 Blake, who subsequently proved himself most intelligent, and 

 from his knowledge of the country of great service, and I 

 requested him to accompany us up the Port Hacking Creek, on 

 our expedition in search of a railway passage. 



I was glad to find that he, a practical man, and well acquainted 

 vsdth most of the country through which we should have to pass, 

 was strongly impressed with the belief that we should find such 

 a passage by following up Port Hacking Creek, and up which he 

 was aware that the tides ascended to more than one-third of its 

 supposed whole length to its northern bend at Bulge Eange, by 

 Mr. Gilbert, Hargraves House, whither it comes by an easterly 

 course from the Bottle Porest Road direction. 



"With this additional encouragement we started hopefully, on 

 November 18, from North Balmain, where I had previously 

 proposed the coal terminus should be. We were accompanied 

 by Mr. Thomas Mort and Mr. Moriarty to this, the starting- 

 point of our so-ca,lled " trial," or more properly, our " recon- 

 naissance-survey," and which survey had necessarily and 

 throughout to be made almost entirely on foot. Our good 

 friends having bid us farewell, and a successful issue to the 

 excursion, we started from an elevation of about twenty-five feet 



