Garden Prison .] TERRA. AUSTRALIS. 
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 
Moniteyr, 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 
voluntarily 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 pre- 
tence that the passport was exclusively for the Investigator ; and more 
has already been said upon them than is due to their real importance. 
These Moniteurs, however, informed me of two material circum- 
stances,— -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 
409 
1805. 
March. 
VOL. II. 
