-574 
A VOYAGE TO 
[At Mauritius, 
1803. 
December. 
Sunday 25. 
Consul ; it follow s then, as I am willing to explain it, tliat I am not and was 
not an impostor. This plea was given up when a more plausible one was 
thought to be found ; but I cannot compliment Your Excellency upon this 
alteration in your position, for the first, although false, is the most tenable 
post of the two. 
Trusting that upon a due consideration of all the circumstances, you 
will be pleased to fulfil the intention for which the passport was given, I have 
the honour to be. 
From my confinement. Your Excellency’s obedient servant, 
Dec. 25, 1803. Matthew Flinders. 
In the evening, a letter was brought me by a soldier from 
general De Caen, and the haste with which it had been sent inspired 
favourable hopes ; I did not expect the visit of the interpreter until 
the following day, and therefore attempted to decipher the letter 
by the help of a French dictionary, with a degree of anxiety which 
its contents were but little calculated to satisfy : it was as follows. 
I did not answer your letter of the 21st December, Sir, because it was 
useless to commence a debate here between you and me, upon the motives 
well or ill founded from which I took upon myself to stop the Cumberland 
until further orders. On the other hand, I should have had too much 
advantage in refuting your assertions, notwithstanding the reasonings and 
quotations with which you have adorned them. 
I was still willing to attribute the unreserved tone you had used in that 
letter, to the ill humour produced by your present situation. I was far from 
thinking that after having seriously reflected upon the causes and circum- 
stances, you should take occasion from a silence so delicate to go still fur- 
ther ; but your last letter no longer leaves me an alternative. 
Your undertaking, as extraordinary as it was inconsiderate, to depart 
from Port Jackson in the Cumberland, more to give proof of an officious zeal, 
more for the private interests of Great Britain than for what had induced 
the French government to give you a passport, which I shall unfold at a 
proper opportunity, had already given me an idea of your character ; but 
this letter overstepping all the bounds of civility, obliges me to tell you. 
