A WHITE WOMAN AMONGST BLACKS.

Evening Star, Issue 3273, 16 August 1873, Page 3

A WHITE WOMAN AMONGST BLACKS.

Considerable excitement has been created in town by a report, emanating from Mr Robert Hewitt, to the effect that a white woman, who is supposed to be the one afier whom so many searches have been made by the Government and others, and wha is reported to have been captured by the blacks mine five-and-twenty years ago, has been found, and is now on her way to Rockhampton. It seems that Mr Hewitt and party, while travelling along the coast, mi t with an old blackfellow, who, in the course of conversation, mentioned to Mr Hewitt that he knew where there was a white woman who had been with a tribe of blacks ever since he was a boy, and that he could find her, upon which the blackfellow was secured for the night, lest he should not be as good as his word, and at daylight the party, with the darkie fastened by the way of security bo Mr Hewitt’s stirrup, pursued their course for a distance of seventeen miles, and came upon the woman, who was lying down upon the open beach, and quite alone. She was perfectly naked, and is described as being of fine athletic form, above the middle age, and fully six feet in height, healthy and strong, although she refused to budge a foot when captured, having to he carried some seven miles to the place selected for her detention, She is apparently unable to speak a word of English, but that, as iu the case of Morrell, who was eighteen years with the blacks, will no doubt be only temporary, and her native language return to her, when pubic curiosity will, we expect, be gratified by her history. Some of our readers may remember that about the year 1855 a report was circulated in the Sydney Press that a white woman had been seen on the coast north of Kepplc Bay, that Messrs Archer instituted a search for her, though without success; and that expeditions for her recapture were undertaken bv Mr Wiseman and Mr G. H, Murray, by orders of the Government, which proved fruitless. It has loug been supposed that the white woman said to be with the blacks, was the wife of the chief constable at Gladstone, who some years since was supposed to have been wrecked on the coast'in the Sea Gull, in which Mr Norman Hay and others perished, but as she was a short stout woman, and the one found is unusually tall, that fact is set at rest. We are disposed to attach some little truth to the report, as it has been known that the blacks have had a white woman in their possession ; at the same time all the particulars would equally well describe a ship’s figure-head of a woman washed ashore from a wreck and found “lying down on the beach.” —Rockhampton Ary us.