By Exerting Themselves,
They Baled Her Out, And Again Steered From It.
For some time it was not seen,
and they conceived themselves safe, when, rising immediately under the boat,
it
Lifted her to the height of many yards on its back, whence slipping off,
she dropped as from a precipice, and immediately filled and sunk.
The midshipman and one of the marines were sucked into the vortex which
the whale had made, and disappeared at once. The two other marines swam
for the nearest shore, but one only reached it, to recount the fate
of his companions.
August, 1790. In the beginning of this month, in company with Mr. Dawes
and Mr. Worgan, late surgeon of the 'Sirius', I undertook an expedition
to the southward and westward of Rose Hill, where the country had never
been explored. We remained out seven days, and penetrated to a considerable
distance in a S.S.W. direction, bounding our course at a remarkable hill,
to which, from its conical shape, we gave the name of Pyramid-hill.
Except the discovery of a river (which is unquestionably the Nepean
near its source) to which we gave the name of the Worgan, in honour of one of
our party, nothing very interesting was remarked.
Towards the end of the month, we made a second excursion to the north-west
of Rose Hill, when we again fell in with the Nepean, and traced it to the spot
where it had been first discovered by the party of which I was a member,
fourteen months before, examining the country as we went along.
Little doubt now subsisted that the Hawkesbury and Nepean were one river.
We undertook a third expedition soon after to Broken Bay, which place we found
had not been exaggerated in description, whether its capacious harbour,
or its desolate incultivable shores, be considered. On all these excursions
we brought away, in small bags, as many specimens of the soil of the country
we had passed through, as could be conveniently carried, in order that
by analysis its qualities might be ascertained.
CHAPTER VIII.
Transactions of the Colony in the Beginning of September, 1790.
The tremendous monster who had occasioned the unhappy catastrophe
just recorded was fated to be the cause of farther mischief to us.
On the 7th instant, Captain Nepean, of the New South Wales Corps,
and Mr. White, accompanied by little Nanbaree, and a party of men,
went in a boat to Manly Cove, intending to land there, and walk on to
Broken Bay. On drawing near the shore, a dead whale, in the most disgusting
state of putrefaction, was seen lying on the beach, and at least two hundred
Indians surrounding it, broiling the flesh on different fires, and feasting
on it with the most extravagant marks of greediness and rapture.
As the boat continued to approach, they were observed to fall into confusion
and to pick up their spears, on which our people lay upon their oars
and Nanbaree stepping forward, harangued them for some time, assuring them
that we were friends.
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