Some men have tried roasted
snake, but I never heard of anyone who could keep it on his stomach.
The blacks, with their keen scent, knew when a snake was near by the
odour it emitted, but they avoided the reptile whether alive or dead.
Before any white man had made his abode in Gippsland, a schooner
sailed from Sydney chartered by a new settler who had taken up a
station in the Port Phillip district. His wife and family were on
board, and he had shipped a large quantity of stores, suitable for
commencing life in a new land. It was afterwards remembered that the
deck of the vessel was encumbered with cargo of various kinds,
including a bullock dray, and that the deck hamper would unfit her to
encounter bad weather. As she did not arrive at Port Phillip within
a reasonable time, a cutter was sent along the coast in search of
her; and her long boat was found ashore near the Lakes Entrance, but
nothing else belonging to her was ever seen.
When the report arose in 1843 that a white woman had been seen with
the blacks, it was supposed that she was one of the passengers of the
missing schooner, and parties of horsemen went out to search for her
among the natives, but the only white woman ever found was a wooden
one--the figure-head of a ship.
Some time afterwards, when Gippsland had been settled by white men, a
tree was discovered on Woodside station near the beach, in the bark
of which letters had been cut, and it was said they would correspond
with the initials of the names of some of the passengers and crew of
the lost schooner, and by their appearance they must have been carved
many years previously.
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