Garden Prison .] 
TERRA AUSTRALIS. 
401 
Cockburne of the Phaeton had come in for the purpose of seeing 1804. 
general De Caen ; but on entering the port he had been met, blind- Sq,tcmbs1 ' 
folded, and taken on board the prison ship, which was also the guard 
ship ; that finding he could not see the general, and that no officer 
was sent to treat with him, he left a packet from captain Osborn and 
returned in disgust. His mission, we were told, was to negotiate an 
exchange of prisoners, particularly mine ; but in the answer given 
by general De Caen it was said, that not being a prisoner of war, 
no exchange for me could be accepted ; nor did any one obtain his 
liberty in consequence. 
Few persons were admitted to the Garden Prison during the October, 
presence of the English squadron ; but it did not prevent captain 
Bergeret and M. Bonnefoy from coming occasionally. In the end 
of October I learned with much regret, that the interpreter had been 
dismissed from his employment, in consequence of having carried 
only one copy of the same newspaper to general De Caen, when 
two had been found in an American vessel which he had boarded off 
the port, according to custom ; the other had been communicated to 
some of his friends, which was deemed an ifremissible offence. This 
obliging man, to whom I was under obligations for many acts of at- 
tention and some of real service, feared to ask any future permission 
to visit the Garden Prison. 
Admiral Linois arrived from a cruise on the 31st, with three 
rich prizes, and got into Port Bourbon unimpeded by our ships, 
which were off another part of the island; and the same evening 
commodore Osborn quitted Mauritius. Mr. Robertson and Mr. Webb 
of the Aplin were now permitted to go to England by the way of November. 
America ; and I took the good opportunity of sending by the first of 
these gentlemen a copy of the general chart of Terra Australis, 
comprehending the whole of my discoveries and examinations in 
abridgment, and a paper on the magnetism of ships addressed to the 
president of the Royal Society.* Four officers of the army also 
•This paper was read before the Society, and published in the Transactions of 1805, 
Part II. 
3 F 
VOL. II. 
