1804.
August.
public news, and also with the opinions entertained in the island upon the subject of my imprisonment. Those who knew that I had a passport, and was confined upon suspicion only, thought the conduct of the captain-general severe, impolitic, and unjust; and some who pretended to have information from near the fountain head, hinted that if his invitation to dinner had been accepted, a few days would have been the whole of my detention. Others understood my passport and papers to have been lost in the shipwreck, and that it was uncertain whether I were the commander of the expedition on discovery or not; whilst many, not conceiving that their governor could thus treat an officer employed in the service of science without his having given some very sufficient cause, naturally enough made a variety of unfavourable conjectures; and in due time, that is, when these conjectures had passed through several hands, reports were in circulation of my having chased a vessel on shore on the south side of the island,—of soundings and surveys of the coast found upon me,—and of having quarrelled with the governor of New South Wales, who had refused to certify on my passport the necessity of quitting the Investigator and embarking in the Cumberland; and this last seemed to have acquired credit. I will not pretend to say, that general De Caen had any part in propagating these reports, for the purpose of satisfying the curiosity of an inquisitive public and turning its attention from the truth, though far from thinking it improbable; be that as it may, the nature of my voyage, our shipwreck, the long passage made in the little Cumberland, and our severe imprisonment, had excited a considerable degree of interest; and I was told that this imprisonment had been mentioned in an anonymous letter to the captain-general, as one of the many tyrannical acts committed in the short time he had held the government of the island.
One of the persons who asked permission to see me, was M. Augustin Baudin, brother of the deceased commander of Le Géographe; he testified the grateful sense his brother had always