path to the interior of the new continent.

Bass's eagerness to explore soon found other scope. In 1797, report was
brought to Sydney by shipwrecked mariners that, in traversing the coast,
they had seen coal. He at once set off to investigate. At the place now
called Coalcliff, about twenty miles south of Botany Bay, he found a vein
of coal about twenty feet above the surface of the sea. It was six or
seven feet thick, and dipped to the southward until it became level with
the sea, "and there the lowest rock you can see when the surf retires is
all coal." It was a discovery of first-class importance--the first
considerable find of a mineral that has yielded incalculable wealth to
Australia.* (* It is well to remember that the use of coal was discovered
in England in very much the same way. Mr. Salzmann, English Industries of
the Middle Ages, 1913 page 3, observes that "it is most probable that the
first coal used was washed up by the sea, and such as could be quarried
from the face of the cliffs where the seams were exposed by the action of
the waves." He quotes a sixteenth century account relative to Durham: "As
the tide comes in it bringeth a small wash sea coal, which is employed to
the making of salt and the fuel of the poor fisher towns adjoining."
Hence, originally, coal in England was commonly called sea-coal even when
obtained inland.) He made this useful piece of investigation in August;
and in the following month undertook a journey on foot, in company with
Williamson, the acting commissary, from Sydney to the Cowpastures,
crossing and re-crossing the River Nepean, and thence descending to the
sea a few miles south of his old resting place, Watta-Mowlee. His map and
notes are full of evidence of his careful observation. "Tolerably good
level ground," "good pastures," "mountainous brushy land," and so forth,
are remarks scored across his track line. But these were pastimes in
comparison with the enterprise that was now occupying his mind, and upon
which his fame chiefly rests.