RIDGED NARRATIVE (UNPUBLISHED).

(Melbourne Public Library.)

from the general's conduct, that he has sought to impose upon him, and
this for the purpose, perhaps for the pleasure, of prolonging to the
utmost my unjust detention.

But if apprehensions for the safety of this land are not the cause of the
order of the French government remaining unexecuted, what reason can
there be, sufficiently strong to have induced the captain-general to
incur the risk of misobedience, first to the passport, and afterwards to
the order for my liberation. This I shall endeavour to explain in the
following and last chapter of this discussion; promising, however, that
what I shall have to offer upon this part of the subject, can only be
what a consideration of the captain-general's conduct has furnished me,
as being the most probable. I am not conscious of having omitted any
material circumstance, either here or in the narration, or of having
misrepresented any; as if after an attentive perusal, the reader thinks
my explanation not borne out by the facts, I submit it to his judgment to
deduce a better; and should esteem myself obliged by his making it
public, so that it may reach so far as even to me.

Chapter XII. Probable causes of my imprisonment, and of the marine
minister's order for my liberation being suspended by the captain-general

Before explaining what I conceive to have been the true causes which led
the captain-general to act so contrary to my passport, as to imprison me
and seize my vessel, charts, and papers; it will be proper to give the
reader a knowledge of some points in His Excellency's character, in
addition to those he will have extracted from the abridged narrative. At
the time of my arrival, he entertained, and does I believe still
entertain, an indiscriminate animosity against Englishmen, whether this
arose from his having been deprived of the advantage of fixing the seat
of his government at Pondicherry, by the renewal of war in 1803, or from
any antecedent circumstance, I cannot pretend to say; but that he did
harbour such animosity, and that in an uncommon degree, is averred by his
keeping in irons, contrary to the usages of war, the first English seamen
that were brought to the island (Narrative page 58 and 70); by the
surprise he testified at the proceeding of a French gentleman, who
interceded with him for the liberty on parole of a sick English officer;
on which occasion he said amongst other things, t