Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/86

 Ixxvi AN INTRODUCTORY made an excursion outside the boundaries of Sydney town. He must have heard enough about the Blue Mountains to stimulate any imagination that was not " duller than the fat weed that rots itself at ease at Lethe wharf," For among the men he met there was George Caley — the botanist sent out by Banks to collect for the Royal Gardens at Kew — who was always moving about in search of specimens, and who is still remem- bered by the famous repulse he met with among the ranges ; and there was the energetic young Ensign Barrallier, equally eager to distinguish himself in exploration, and whose ambition it was to be the first man across the Blue Mountains into the unknown country beyond them. Governor King's celebrated joke — sending Barrallier on an embassy to the King of the Blue Mountains in order to detach him from the Corps — ^was quite fresh when the Investigator returned to the Cove ; and as King took great interest in exploration, the conversation at his table naturally turned on the mysterious mountains, the unknown rivers, the wonderful harbours, the Mediterranean sea, and every other physical feature of the country, as well as its peculiar vegetation and the grotesqucrie of its animal life. Could any artist on his travels have wished for better guides ? WestalFs indifEerence becomes doubly singular when we recol- lect that all through his voyage he was in daily communion with Flinders, whose devotion to his work reached its climax in martyrdom. So devoted was he that the disappointment he endured when forced by the state of his ship to discontinue his voyage wrung these words from him : — " The accomplishment of the survey was, in fact, an object so near my heart that could I have foreseen the train of ills that were to follow the decay of the Investigator, and prevent the survey being resumed — and had my existence depended upon the expression of a wish — ^I do not know that it would have received utterance." No exaggera- tion there, for it is borne out by the melancholy record of his life. But what a contrast it presents with Westall's letter 1 One man prepared to sacrifice life itself if only he could accomplish the great object of his ambition ; the other absolutely too indifferent to seek fitting subjects for his pencil ! Digitized by Google