1805.
March.
put into the hands of general De Caen's secretary, and these very passages pointed out for him to copy? Yet the reasons alleged in the Moniteur, to be true, require no less.
The assertion that I acknowledge to have deviated voluntarily from my route, for the Isle of France was not in my passage,—if voluntary mean, without necessity, must be false altogether. I had intended to pass the island without stopping, and probably said so; but that the intention was altered voluntarily, could not have been said, for the necessity arising from the bad state of the schooner was alleged for it. Whether Mauritius be in the passage from Timor to the Cape of Good Hope, any seaman or geographer who knows the trade winds, can tell: it is as much in the passage as is the Cape in going from Europe to India. The above assertion induced me to examine captain Cook's track from Timor to the Cape, as it is traced upon Arrowsmith's general chart, and to measure the distance from a certain part of it to Port Louis, and from thence to regain the track really made; and I found that his distance would not have been increased so much as one hundred miles; or less than the half of what ships augment their distance by stopping at Table Bay, in their route to India. It may perhaps be said, that my voluntary deviation and the island not being in the passage, apply only to my intention of passing Mauritius and then changing it. If so, the assertion could only be made for superficial readers, and contains nothing; such, in fact, are all the charges when duly examined, not excepting the pretence that the passport was exclusively for the Investigator; and more has already been said upon them than is due to their real impprtance.
These Moniteurs, however, informed me of two material circumstances,—that there was at least one person in France who viewed my detention in its true light, and that the government had either been deceived by the representations of general De Caen, or coincided with his views from some secret motive; consequently, that too much reliance ought not to be placed in an early liberation by its orders. I then determined to write to monsieur De Fleurieu, author of the