236 THE LIFE OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS 



Canton. Some others returned to Port Jackson, and the 

 most of his own crew resolved to share Flinders 's fortunes 

 in the schooner. The vessel was hardly fit for a long 

 voyage. But Flinders was determined to get home to 

 England, report himself and his adventures, and come 

 back to New Holland with better equipment, and resume 

 his surveys. The Cumberland sailed round the north of 

 Australia, touched at Timor, and then headed for Mauri- 

 tius, at that time in the possession of the French. She 

 anchored at Port Louis on December 17, 1803. 



Flinders was in possession of a " pass," in the interests 

 of Science, by which he was understood to be secure from 

 any hostility on the part of French vessels of war. Baudin 

 was provided with a protection as against the armed ships 

 of England. A similar civility was exercised on other 

 occasions, and the terms of a pass were usually respected. 

 But Captain Flinders, reaching Mauritius in an unsea- 

 worthy ship, with no thought of missing the friendly rites 

 of hospitality, was seized on pretence of his being a spy. 

 His ship was confiscated, together with his papers and all 

 the fruits of his surveying toil. Whether he was detained 

 as a suspected person, or as a naval officer in arms against 

 France, was never made clear. De Caen, the Governor, 

 is represented as an illiterate person, and might be 

 acting only in the manner of a Jack-in-office, a character 

 not unfamiliar to us in the story of French colonization. 

 Yet, the fact of Baudin 's story being published with his 

 claims of wide discovery, his Terre Napoleon, etc., in the 

 end satisfied most people that De Caen was alive to the 

 opportunity of seizing any possible occasion for hamper- 

 ing English exploration. 1 



Captain Flinders was treated with some severity at 



1 This notion is supported by the fact that copies of Flinders's chart 

 of Van Diemen's Land were struck off for Baudin's use (Philos. Mag., 

 XVI, 265) ; and by Flinders's remark that he saw the Cumberland used 

 at Port Louis, and her stores consumed. A statement that the ship was 

 afterwards in service under Baudin we have not been able to verify. 



