everyone that accompanied him were anxious to return and penetrate further into the interior in the hope of finding a large river, but the exposure undergone by the Governor at Broken Bay was now telling upon him, and his ardent spirit had to submit to a few weeks' rest. His hopes were raised, however, and he wrote that he now knew that there was good country near the settlement, and that it should be settled in the spring.
Tench—the only one or the old chroniclers who in his writings makes a departure from the hard, matter-of-fact, official style of the others—thus writes of one of these exploring expeditions undertaken in April 1791, to ascertain whether or not the Hawkesbury and the Nepean were the same river:—
'The party consisted of twenty-one persons, including the Governor and our friends Colbee (Coleby) and Boladeree (Ballooderry). Their equipment,' he says, 'will convey to those who have rolled along on turnpike roads only,' some idea of what these explorations meant.
Every man carried his own knapsack, which contained provisions for ten days, a gun, blanket and canteen—40 lbs. weight in all; then to this were added cooking utensils and a hatchet, and they were 'garbed to drag through morasses, tear through thickets, ford rivers and scale rocks.' It will be seen from these few lines alone that Phillip and his officers did not rust in the settlement, and let
