The Journal of Gregory Blaxland

TO
JOHN OX LEY PARKER, Esq.,
OF
CHELM SFORD, ESSEX.
L o n d o n , F e b r u a r y i o , 1823.
Dear Sir,—Feelings of gratitude for
your kind attention to me in the early
part of life liave induced me to dedicate
to you the following short Journal
of my passage over the Blue Mountains,
in the colony of New South Wales,
under the persuasion that it will afford
you pleasure at all times to hear that
any of your family have been instrumental
in promoting the prosperity of
any country in which they may reside,
however distant that country may be
from the immediate seat of our Government.
Since my return to England many of
my friends have expressed a wish to
peruse my Journal. To meet their request
in the only practicable or satisfactory
manner, I have consented to its
being printed. Devoid as it is of any
higher pretensions than belong to it as
a plain unvarnished statement, it may
not be deemed wholly uninteresting,