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Updated: May 14, 2025
When everything was ready I sent out invitations by mail-men, smoke signals, and message sticks to tribes both far and near, to come and see me set fire to the water! In parentheses, I may remark, that with regard to smoke-signals, white smoke only is allowed to ascend in wreaths and curls; while black smoke is sent up in one great volume.
It may be mentioned here that no matter how unfriendly tribes may be, they always exchange news by means of smoke-signals. I may also say that at corroborees and such-like festivities a vast amount of poetic boasting and exaggeration is indulged in, each "hero" being required to give practical demonstrations of the things he has seen, the doughty deeds he has done, &c.
In the day-time, when necessary, smoke-signals are transmitted, though never with the same safety as are the fire-signals. By burning large torches of wet straw, masses of white smoke are produced, upon which the alarm is raised that the country is in danger.
How these smoke-signals gave an idea of the white man and his wonders I am utterly at a loss to imagine. In the meantime Yamba had prepared a great feast for the visitors, the principal dish being our remaining big turtle, of which the blacks ate a prodigious quantity.
Leaving one man as boat-keeper, we spread ourselves into line, and regularly beat the little island from end to end, but without finding a single black; we could, however, see their smoke-signals arising from Gould Island, and observed several heavily-laden canoes making the best of their way towards Hinchinbrook.
Immediately on our arrival, Yamba and her husband lit some fires, and made what were apparently smoke-signals to their friends on the main. They first cut down a quantity of green wood with my tomahawk and arranged it in the form of a pyramid.
When we reached the battle-ground, my men sent up smoke-signals of defiance, announcing the fact of our invasion, and challenging the enemy to come down from the mountains and fight us.
This challenge was promptly responded to by other smoke-signals, but as at least a day must elapse before our antagonists could arrive I spent the interval in devising a plan of battle oddly enough, on the lines of a famous historic Swiss encounter at Grandson five or six centuries ago.
On their way up from Townsville, they had seen smoke-signals thrown up from the mangroves at the mouth of the Herbert River, and these were answered both from the range behind Cardwell, and from Hinchinbrook, so it was evident there were blacks on the island, though most likely concealed in some of the hidden valleys, which, from the volcanic nature of the country, were so plentiful, and so difficult to find.
As she lay there on the beach her head towered above me to a height of nearly fifteen feet. Never can I forget the scene that followed, when the blacks from the surrounding country responded to the smoke-signals announcing the capture of the "great fish."
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