The Explorers (18 page)

Thus, he said, even being a chief did not prevent him being used ill, for when he told them he was chief they gave him to understand that
money
made a man a chief.

After a time, however, he acknowledged that he got better used, in proportion as he became acquainted with the customs and language. He expressed his astonishment at the perseverance with which white people worked from morning till night to get money; nor could he conceive how they were able to endure so much labour.

After having heard this account, Finow asked several questions respecting the nature of money. What is it made of? Is it like iron? Can it be fashioned like iron into various useful instruments? If not, why cannot people procure what they want in the way of barter? But where is money to be got? If it be made, then every man ought to spend his time in making money, that when he has got plenty he may be able afterwards to obtain whatever else he wants.

In answer to the last observation, Mr Mariner replied that the material of which money was made was very scarce and difficult to be got and that only chiefs and great men could procure readily a large quantity of it; and this either by being inheritors of plantations or houses which they allowed others to have, for paying them so much tribute in money every year; or by their public services; or by paying small sums of money for things when they were in plenty and afterwards letting others have them for larger sums when they were scarce; and, as to the lower classes of people, they worked hard and got paid by their employers in small quantities of money as the reward of their labour etc. That the king was the only person that was allowed to make (to coin) money, and that he put his mark upon all he made, that it might be known to be true; that no person could readily procure the material of which it was made without paying money for it; and if, contrary to the
taboo
of the king, he turned this material into money he would scarcely have made as much as he had given for it.

Mr Mariner was then going on to show the convenience of money as a medium of exchange, when Filimóëátoo interrupted him, saying to Finow, I understand how it is: money is less cumbersome than goods and it is very convenient for a man to exchange away his goods for money which, at any other time, he can exchange again for the same or any other goods that he may want; whereas the goods themselves may perhaps spoil by keeping (particularly if provisions), but the money, he supposed, would not spoil; and although it was of no true value itself, yet being scarce and difficult to be got without giving something useful and really valuable for it, it was imagined to be of value; and if everybody considered it so and would readily give their goods for it, he did not see but what it was of a sort of real value to all who possessed it, as long as their neighbours chose to take it in the same way.

Mr Mariner found he could not give a better explanation; he therefore told Filimóëátoo that his notion of the nature of money was a just one.

After a pause of some length, Finow replied that the explanation did not satisfy him. He still thought it a foolish thing that people should place a value on money when they either could not or would not apply it to any useful (physical) purpose. ‘If,' said he, ‘it were made of iron and could be converted into knives, axes and chisels, there would be some sense in placing a value on it; but as it is I see none. If a man,' he added, ‘has more yams than he wants, let him exchange some of them away for pork or
gnatoo
.† Certainly money is much handier, and more convenient, but then, as it will not spoil by being kept, people will store it up, instead of sharing it out, as a chief ought to do, and thus become selfish; whereas, if provisions were the principal property of a man, and it ought to be, as being both the most useful and the most necessary, he could not store it up, for it would spoil, and so he would be obliged either to exchange it away for something else useful or share it out to his neighbours, and inferior chiefs and dependants, for nothing.'

He concluded by saying, ‘I understand now very well what it is that makes the Papalangis so selfish—it is this money!'†

G
REGORY
B
LAXLAND

Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson
Breach the Barrier, 1813

A modest man, Gregory Blaxland wrote his official account of the first crossing of the Blue Mountains in the third person, and referred to it in his title as ‘a tour'. And the crossing itself, after so many frustrated attempts by others, seems to have been ridiculously easy. Aboriginal trails may have aided the explorers in finding their way through the maze of canyons, cliffs and isolated pinnacles that form the Blue Mountains, but the key was to stick to the ridges. Whatever the case, this defining moment in European Australian exploration seems like an anticlimax.

On Tuesday, May 11, 1813, Mr Gregory Blaxland, Mr William Wentworth and Lieutenant Lawson, attended by four servants, with five dogs, and four horses laden with provisions, ammunition and other necessaries, left Mr Blaxland's farm at the South Creek for the purpose of endeavouring to effect a passage over the Blue Mountains, between the Western River and the River Grose. They crossed the Nepean, or Hawkesbury River, at the ford, on to Emu Island, at four o'clock, p.m., and having proceeded, according to their calculation, two miles in a southwest direction, through forest land and good pasture, encamped at five o'clock at the foot of the first ridge. The distance travelled on this and on the subsequent days was computed by time; the rate being estimated at about two miles per hour…

On Monday the 17th, having laden the horses with as much grass as could be put on them, in addition to their other burdens, they moved forward along the path which they had cleared and marked, about six miles and a half. The bearing of the route they had been obliged to keep along the ridge varied exceedingly; it ran sometimes in a north-north-west direction, sometimes south-east, or due south, but generally south-west or south-southwest. They encamped in the afternoon between two very deep gullies, on a narrow ridge, Grose Head bearing north-east by north, and Mount Banks north-west by west. They had to fetch water up the side of the precipice, about six hundred feet high, and could get scarcely enough for the party. The horses had none this night: they performed the journey well, not having to stand under their loads.

The following day was spent in cutting a passage through the brushwood, for a mile and a half farther. They returned to their camp at five o'clock, very much tired and dispirited. The ridge, which was not more than fifteen or twenty yards over, with deep precipices on each side, was rendered almost impassable by a perpendicular mass of rock, nearly thirty feet high, extending across the whole breadth, with the exception of a small broken rugged track in the centre. By removing a few large stones, they were enabled to pass.

On Wednesday the 19th, the party moved forward along this path, bearing chiefly west and west-south-west. They now began to ascend the second ridge of the mountains and, from this elevation, they obtained for the first time an extensive view of the settlements below. Mount Banks bore north-east; Grose Head, north-east; Prospect Hill, east by south; the Seven Hills, east-north-east; Windsor, north-east by east.

At a little distance from the spot at which they began the ascent, they found a pyramidical heap of stones, the work, evidently, of some European, one side of which the natives had opened, probably in the expectation of finding some treasure deposited in it. This pile they concluded to be the one erected by Mr Bass to mark the end of his journey.† That gentleman attempted, some time ago, to pass the mountains, and to penetrate into the interior; but having got thus far, he gave up the undertaking as impracticable; reporting, on his return, that it was impossible to find a passage even for a person on foot. Here, therefore, the party had the satisfaction of believing that they had penetrated as far as any European had been before them…

On Saturday the 22nd instant, they proceeded in the track marked the preceding day rather more than three miles in a south-westerly direction, when they reached the summit of the third and highest ridge of the mountains southward of Mount Banks. From the bearing of Prospect Hill, and Grose Head, they computed this spot to be eighteen miles in a straight line from the River Nepean, at the point at which they crossed it. On the top of this ridge, they found about two thousand acres of land clear of trees, covered with loose stones and short coarse grass, such as grows on some of the commons in England. Over this heath they proceeded for about a mile and a half, in a southwesterly direction, and encamped by the side of a fine stream of water, with just wood enough on the banks to serve for firewood. From the summit, they had a fine view of all the settlements and country eastward, and of a great extent of country to the westward and south-west. But their progress in both the latter directions was stopped by an impassable barrier of rock, which appeared to divide the interior from the coast, as with a stone wall rising perpendicularly out of the side of the mountain.

In the afternoon, they left their little camp in the charge of three of the men, and made an attempt to descend the precipice by following some of the streams of water, or by getting down at some of the projecting points where the rocks had fallen in; but they were baffled in every instance. In some places, the perpendicular height of the rocks above the earth below could not be less than four hundred feet. Could they have accomplished a descent, they hoped to procure mineral specimens which might throw light on the geological character of the country, as the strata appeared to be exposed for many hundred feet, from the top of the rock to the beds of the several rivers beneath.

The broken rocky country on the western side of the cow pasture has the appearance of having acquired its present form from an earthquake, or some other dreadful convulsion of nature, at a much later period than the mountains northward, of which Mount Banks forms the southern extremity. The aspect of the country which lay beneath them much disappointed the travellers: it appeared to consist of sand and small scrubby brushwood, intersected with broken rocky mountains, with streams of water running between them to the eastward towards one point where they probably form the Western River and enter the mountains.

They now flattered themselves that they had surmounted half the difficulties of their undertaking, expecting to find a passage down the mountain more to the northward…

On the 28th, they proceeded about five miles and three-quarters. Not being able to find water, they did not halt till five o'clock when they took up their station on the edge of the precipice. To their great satisfaction, they discovered that what they had supposed to be sandy barren land below the mountain was forest land, covered with good grass and with timber of an inferior quality. In the evening, they contrived to get their horses down the mountain by cutting a small trench with a hoe, which kept them from slipping, where they again tasted fresh grass for the first time since they left the forest land on the other side of the mountain. They were getting into miserable condition…

On the 29th, having got up the horses, and laden them, they began to descend the mountain at seven o'clock, through a pass in the rock about thirty feet wide, which they had discovered the day before when the want of water put them on the alert. Part of the descent was so steep that the horses could but just keep their footing without a load, so that, for some way, the party were obliged to carry the packages themselves. A cart road might, however, easily be made by cutting a slanting trench along the side of the mountain, which is here covered with earth.

This pass is, according to their computation, about twenty miles north-west in a straight line from the point at which they ascended the summit of the mountain. They reached the foot at nine o'clock, a.m., and proceeded two miles, north-north-west, mostly through open meadow land, clear of trees, the grass from two to three feet high. They encamped on the bank of a fine stream of water. The natives, as observed by the smoke of their fires, moved before them as yesterday. The dogs killed a kangaroo, which was very acceptable, as the party had lived on salt meat since they caught the last. The timber seen this day appeared rotten and unfit for building.

Sunday the 30th, they rested in their encampment. One of the party shot a kangaroo with his rifle at a great distance across a wide valley. The climate here was found very much colder than that of the mountain, or of the settlements on the east side, where no signs of frost had made its appearance when the party set out. During the night, the ground was covered with a thick frost and a leg of the kangaroo was quite frozen. From the dead and brown appearance of the grass, it was evident that the weather had been severe for some time past. We were all much surprised at this degree of cold and frost, in the latitude of about 34. The track of the emu was noticed at several places near the camp.

On the Monday, they proceeded about six miles, south-west and west, through forest land, remarkably well watered, and several open meadows, clear of trees and covered with high good grass. They crossed two fine streams of water…