A curious
circumstance secured for her the protection of one of the
principal men of the tribe. This person, acting upon the belief,
universal throughout Australia and the islands of the Torres
Strait, so far as hitherto known, that white people are the
ghosts of the aborigines, fancied that in the stranger he
recognised a long-lost daughter, and at once admitted her into
the relationship which he thought had formerly subsisted between
them. She was immediately acknowledged by the whole tribe as one
of themselves, thus securing an extensive connection in relatives
of all denominations. The headquarters of the tribe being on an
island which all vessels passing through the Torres Strait from
the eastward must approach within two or three miles, she had the
mortification of seeing from twenty to thirty or more ships go
through every summer without anchoring in the neighbourhood, so
as to afford the slightest opportunity of making her escape. Last
year she heard of our two vessels being at Cape York, only twenty
miles distant from some of the tribe who had communicated with us
and had been well treated, but they would not take her over and
watched her even more narrowly than before.
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