402 
A VOYAGE TO 
[At Mauritius, 
1804. 
November. 
December. 
obtained permission to go to India, on condition of returning, '.should 
four French officers whose names were specified, be not sent back 
in exchange ; and two other gentlemen left the Garden Prison, and 
the island soon afterward. In lieu of these, were sent in captain 
Turner and lieutenant Cartwright of the Indian army, and the officers 
of the Princess Charlotte indiaman. 
By information received from the Grande-Riviere prison, 
where the merchant officers and the seamen were confined, it ap- 
peared that my six remaining people, and no doubt many others, 
were very miserable and almost naked ; having been hurried off 
suddenly from Flacq, and compelled to leave their few clothes be- 
hind. On this occasion I addressed the captain-general on the score 
of humanity, intreating him eitherto order their clothes to be restored, < 
or that they should be furnished with others ; and on the same day 
an answer was returned in the most polite manner by colonel 
D’Arsonvafi saying that an order had been given for all the pri- 
soners to be fresh clothed, and their wants supplied. Six weeks af- 
terward, however, finding that the poor seamen remained in the 
same naked state as before, I wrote to remind the town major of 
what he had said ; requesting at the same time, if it were not in- 
tended to give these unfortunate men any clothing, that Mr. Aken 
might be permitted to visit them, in order to relieve their urgent 
necessities from my own «purse. No answer was returned to this 
letter, but it produced the desired effect. 
My hopes of a speedy liberation by an order of the first con- 
sul became weakened in December, on seeing nothing arrive to 
confirm them after a whole year’s imprisonment. On the 17th I 
wrote to remind the captain-general that one year had elapsed ; and 
requested him to consider that the chance of war rendered the arrival 
of despatches uncertain, — that I was suffering an irretrievable loss 
of time, and very severely in my health, advancement, and every 
thing that man holds dear ; 1 begged him to reflect, that the 
rights of the most severe justice would be ensured by sending me 
