of a recently-deceased immigrant. In 1850 he was made the recipient of two small pensions, i.e., £40 from the Legislature of New South Wales, and £12 from Van Diemen's Land. In January, 1856, he was pitched out of a vehicle and so seriously injured that he died on the 2nd February, œtate 76.
White Women Captured by the Blacks.
There is not in the whole history of Victoria a more harrowing episode than the capture and detention of three European women by the Gippsland Aborigines; or one, now more utterly forgotten, and of which no lengthy or complete narrative has appeared in any publication, if the disjointed accounts printed in some of the early newspapers be excepted.
In 1839-40 four or five intercolonial trading vessels sailed from Hobson's Bay, and little or nothing was afterwards heard of them, their passengers or cargoes. Some foundered at sea and disappeared; others were wrecked on the iron-bound coast of the continent, and the island reefs in Bass's Straits; and though rumour in its usually exaggerated form, was rife and busy, the painful surmises assumed no tangible shape for several years; and it was not until 1846 that positive intelligence was received in Melbourne as to the existence of one or more white women amongst a tribe of blacks occupying the country near Port Albert. One of the missing vessels was the "Brittomart," believed to have gone ashore in that neighbourhood. A Miss Lord was on board, and she was supposed to have fallen into the hands of some savages, by the chief of whom she was detained; and in the early part of the year some mounted troopers, whilst riding at the base of a mountain-range, beheld in the company of a group of natives at a distance the figure of a white person, who was at once pronounced by the public voice to be the unfortunate lady. In May, whilst some blacks were making a raid upon a mob of cattle belonging to Mr. M'Millan, a settler, a few miles from the port, a half-caste child fell into his hands, and Miss Lord was believed to be its putative mother. When the intelligence reached Melbourne, much painful interest was excited. The old story of the lost ship was revived; it was the universal topic of conversation, and any scrap of information tending to throw light on the terrible mystery was eagerly devoured. The probable identity of the captive was canvassed in the newspapers, and it was soon enveloped in perplexity from the several theories started. It was positively declared by some that the female was not Miss Lord (for whose rescue £1,000 had been previously offered by relatives in Sydney), but a lady who sailed from Port Phillip to Sydney in the "Brittomart" in 1839; and the following circumstances connected with her supposed detention were communicated by Mr. Stratton, a resident of Tarraville:—" She was a Miss M'Pherson, once attached to an hotel in Elizabeth Street, kept by a Mr. John M'Donald, and known as the Scottish Chiefs. Leaving Melbourne in 1839 to visit her relatives in Sydney, the vessel by which she travelled was totally wrecked on the Gippsland coast, when she by some chance reached the shore, escaping death only to meet a more terrible fate. She was seized by a native tribe, and becoming the prize of its chief, was carried off and kept in the ranges. She gave birth to four children, three of whom died, and was several times seen by the shepherds, but was never permitted to approach a white man, a very rare visitor in such parts at the time. One day in the mountains a shepherd came across a large tree, on the bark of which was carved the name, 'Ellen M'Pherson,' also the name of the ship and some rude directions by which she hoped to be traced and recovered." The controversy started in Melbourne soon spread to the other colonies, and an apparently well-informed correspondent of the Sydney Herald supplied the following particulars, introducing a third unfortunate upon the stage:— "It was the writer's belief that the white captive was neither Miss Lord nor Miss M'Pherson, and in support of this view he quoted the Port Phillip Gazette, 11th December, 1839, to show that the 'Brittomart,' instead of sailing for Sydney, left Melbourne for Hobart Town with nine male and no female passengers. This vessel he thought went ashore at Preservation Island, in sight of Van Diemen's Land, and if any of the crew or passengers escaped, they were probably murdered by some of the runaway convicts or other outlaws then infesting all the Straits Islands. He was himself in the Straits on the night of the supposed wreck of the ' Brittomart,' some sixty miles distant from the scene of the catastrophe. It was his belief, beyond doubt, that the
