London, 19th November 1860. 
To the President and Gentlemen of the Royal Society 
of Arts and Sciences. 
Gentlemen, 
Nothing but confusion exists in the accounts of the early 
navigators in reference to the islands now called Bourbon and 
Mauritius, a ad there is even no authority for proving that 
they were discovered by the Portuguese at all ; though if di- 
scovered by them it was decidedly not in the first year of the 
Governor Almeida in India, as is clearly proved by the ex- 
tracts from the works of Faria Y Souza already transmitted 
to the Society. Nothing is clearly distinguishable until the 
first real settlement on the island of Mauritius by the Dutch 
under Van Neck in 1598. Grant is the authority for all the 
subsequent English writers on the subject who copy his 
pages without any trouble whatever to verify his statements ; 
but it is quite clear that Grant had no oi’iginal documents to 
consult for the early Portuguese portion of his history. So 
with the French writers ; even in the excellent map Afrique 
published by Sanson in 1674, the island is put down as “ lie 
Maurice ” though at that date it could only be known by the 
name of Cirne or one of its many corruptions, as it was not 
until 1698 that any appellation like that of Mauritius was be- 
stowed upon it ; a fact which proves either the ignorance of 
Sanson, or that the map cannot be so ancient as marked, viz. 
16/4. As the Society has a copy of this map, as far as I can 
remember in the collection of maps made the originals by 
Mr. E. Froberville, the Society can consult it for themselves. 
With regard to the term f Cirne/ it has no relation what- 
ever to the Portuguese word signifying “ Swan ” on account 
of the number of the “ Dodos ” seen on the island, but is 
simply a misconception of the geographical position of the 
aucient “ Cirne,” and can be clearly seen from Mr. Lemaire’s 
notes to Pliny (Nat. Hist. IV. 9) as well as from the very 
learned dissertations of Falconer on the voyage of Hanno. 
(Greek Text, explained from the accounts of modern travel- 
