480 
1810. 
March. 
April. 
A VOYAGE TO [At Mauritius. 
of them ; and wrote letters to the principal of those more distant 
inhabitants, whose kindness demanded my gratitude. Early next 
morning a red flag with a pendant under it, showing one or more of 
our ships to be cruising before the port, was hoisted upon the signal 
hills ; this was an unwelcome sight, for it had been an invariable rule 
to let no cartel or neutral vessel go out, so long as English ships 
were before the island. I however took leave of the benevolent 
and respectable family which had afforded me an asylum during 
four years and a half ; and on arriving at my friend Pitot’s in the 
town, was met by Messrs. Hope and Ramsden, neither of whom 
knew any other reason for setting me at liberty than that the captain- 
general had granted it to Mr. Hope’s solicitations. 
On waiting upon colonel Monistrol on the 30th, it appeared that 
nothing had been done relative to the Cumberland, or to returning 
what had been taken away, particularly the third volume of my log 
book so often before mentioned ; he promised however to take the 
captain-general’s pleasure upon these subjects, and to repeat my 
offer of making and signing any extracts from the book which His 
Excellency might desire to preserve. In the evening I had the plea- 
sure to meet a large party of my contrymen and women, at a dinner 
given by M. Foisy, president of the Society of Emulation ; and from 
the difficulty of speaking English after a cessation of four years, I 
then became convinced of the possibility of a man’s forgetting his 
own language. 
There were lying in port two Dutch and one American vessel, 
with a number of Frenchmen on board, whom marshal Daendels, 
governor of the remaining Dutch possessions in the East, had 
engaged to officer some new regiments of Malays ; these vessels 
waited only for the absence of our cruisers to go to Batavia ; and 
that we might not give information of them was the alleged cause 
for detaining the cartel all the month of April, our squadron keeping 
so close off the port that they dared not venture out. 
On May 3, captain Willoughby of the N<^r6ide made a descent 
May. 
