small channel sufficiently deep for boats. The latitude was made to be
34° 52' south; the sloping Point Bass, to the northward, bore N. 12° E.,
and a steep head at the southern extremity of the bay, S. 35° E. The tide
was found to rise seven or eight feet, and the time of high water to be
about _eight hours and a half after_ the moon passed over the meridian.

The great chain of high land, called the Blue Mountains, by which the
colony at Port Jackson is prevented from extending itself to the west,
appeared to Mr. Bass to terminate here, near the sea coast. The base of
this southern extremity of the chain, he judged to extend twenty-five or
thirty miles, in a south-western direction from Point Bass; after which
it turns north-westward. In the direction of west from Shoals Haven, and
in all the space to the south of that line, was an extensive, flat
country, where a party desirous of penetrating into the interior might
reasonably hope to avoid those impediments which, at the back of Port
Jackson., have constantly proved insurmountable.

In an excursion from the boat towards the southern end of the mountains,
Mr. Bass fell in with a considerable stream, which he traced down to the
shore, about three miles north of Shoals' Haven: this is the first inlet
of the long bay, which had been observed from the sea, with a bar running
across the entrance. The soil on the southern bank of this stream he
compared, for richness, to the banks of the Hawkesbury; and attributes
this unusual fertility to the same cause: repeated inundations. In fact,
the stream has since been found to descend from the mountains at twelve
or fifteen miles from the coast, and to run along their southern
extremity to the sea; so that it performs the same office here that the
Hawkesbury does further north--that of being a channel for the waters
which descend from the high back land; but as, in the heavy rains, it is
also unequal to the task, the banks are overflowed, and the low country