102 
FROM SYDNEY TO TORRES STRAIT. 
Northern Australia. They were probably a few individuals frowned on alike by Nature 
and by Fortune, perhaps outcasts from their tribe, who had set up their camp near Somerset 
in the hope of picking up some crumbs from the white man’s table. Nor do such represent 
a primitive, but rather a degraded condition of mankind—the outcome of a life of semi¬ 
starvation, and of complete isolation from better endowed races, which has lasted for ages. 
There are reports of the existence, in the interior, of 
tribes in the possession of superior attributes, both physical 
and mental, and of whom we may learn more hereafter, 
should they escape the rifles of their white enemies. 
Some of the men and women who formed the native portion 
of the scanty population of Somerset were not unfavourable specimens of the Australian race. 
Port Albany looked lonely and deserted, for only now and then a vessel attempts the 
difficult navigation of Torres Strait. A small schooner, painted white, belonging to the London 
Missionary Society, was anchored not far from the “ Challenger,” and on the 4th of September 
the silent bay was enlivened by the arrival of a Colonial steamer, the “ Gothenburg,” 
bound for Sydney. On the 8th of September, H.M.S. “Challenger” started on her next 
cruise through the labyrinth of seas which separate Australia from the old Empire of China. 
NATIVES, CAPE YORK. 
TOMB OF TUI TONGA, TONGATABU. 
