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[Page 1]
My Copy
Extract of a Letter from Mr. Geo. Bass dated Reliance Sydney Cove Aug. 20. 1797.
This Vein of Coal or at the least the northernmost end of it that we could see commences about 20 miles to the Southward of Botany Bay. The land there is nearly twice the height of the north head of Port Jackson, not a steep cliff like it, but has here and there small slopes and lodgements on which trees and shrubs grow; the Sea washes up so close to the foot of it that it is no more than barely passable without some danger in blowing weather. About 20 feet above the surface of the sea & within reach of your hand as you pass along is a Vein of Coal of about six or seven feet in thickness; the rock below it is slaty; but above is of the common rockstone of the country. The vein does not lay perfectly horizontal but goes on declining as it advances to the southward until at the end of about two miles it becomes level with the surface of the Sea & there the lowest rock you can see when the surf retires is all Coal. Here, this bold high land gradually retreats back and leaves in its front a lower sloping land which, keeping the line of the coast, meets the sea with sandy beaches & small bluff heads alternately. In the land at the back of the beaches & in the small bluff heads we traced for about 6 miles along the Coast four Strata of Coal from 15 inches to three feet in thickness with intermediate spaces of slaty rock of a few inches in thickness.
These Veins extend, I think, much further along the Coast than we had an opportunity of seeing
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