V 
456 A VOYAGE TO [At Mauritius, 
CHAPTER VIII. 
Effects of repeated disappointment on the mind. Arrival of a cartel , and 
of letters from India. Letter of the French marine minister. Restitu- 
tion of papers. Applications for liberty evasively answered. Attempted 
seizure of private letters. Memorial to the marine minister. Encroach- 
ments made at Paris on the Investigator’s discoveries. Expected attack 
on Mauritius produces an abridgment of liberty. Strict blockade. 
Arrival of another cartel from India. State of the public finances in 
Mauritius. French cartel sails for the Cape of Good Hope. 
isos. News of negotiations at Paris for peace formed the principal topic 
September. ^ conver g at j on at Mauritius in September, and no one more than 
myself could desire that the efforts of Lord Lauderdale might be 
crowned with success ; a return to England in consequence of such 
an event was of all things what I most desired, but the hope of peace, 
before national animosity and the means of carrying on war became 
diminished, was too feeble to admit of indulging in the anticipation. 
November. The state of incertitude in which I remained after nearly three years 
of anxiety, joined to the absence of my friends Bergeret and Pitot, 
brought on a dejection of spirits which might have proved fatal, had 
I not sought by constant occupation to force my mind from a subject 
so destructive to its repose; such an end to my detention would have 
given too much pleasure to the captain-general, and from a sort of 
perversity in human nature, this conviction even brought its share 
of support. I reconstructed some of my charts on a larger scale, 
corrected and extended the explanatory memoir, and completed for 
the Admiralty an enlarged copy of the Investigator’s log book, so 
far as the materials in my hands could admit ; the study of the French 
