New South Wales, addressed to His Majesty's principal Secretary of
State for the Colonies; the other from Colonel Paterson,
Lieutenant-Governor at Port Jackson, the address of which I do not
remember. In truth of which I hereunto sign my name at Port Napoleon,
Isle of France this 24th day of August, 1807.

"MATTW. FLINDERS,

"Late commander of H.M. Sloop the Investigator, employed on discoveries
to the South Seas, with a French passport."

The papers which the rats had destroyed were not described; but there is
a letter of Flinders to the Admiralty, written after his return to
England (November 8th, 1810), which informs us what they were.* (*
Flinders' Papers.) In this letter he explained that, when the trunk
containing the papers was restored, "I found the rats had gotten into the
trunk and made nests of some of them. I transmitted the whole from the
Isle of France in the state they then were, and now find that some of the
papers necessary to the passing of my accounts as commander and purser of
His Majesty's sloop Investigator are wanting. I have therefore to request
you will lay my case before their Lordships and issue an order to
dispense with the papers which from the above circumstances it is
impossible for me to produce." It is apparent, therefore, that none of
the navigation papers or charts were destroyed. Had any been abstracted
Flinders, who was a punctiliously exact man, would have missed them. His
intense feeling of resentment against Decaen would have caused him to
call attention to the fact if any papers whatever had been disturbed.

The Quarterly Review pointed out the circumstance that the French charts
were "VERY LIKE" those of Flinders, giving sinister emphasis to the words
in italics. They were very like in so far as they were good. It is
evident that if two navigators sail along the same piece of coast, and
each constructs a chart of it, those charts will be "very like" each
other to exactly the degree in which they accurately represent the coast
charted. Freycinet, who did much of the hydrographical work on Baudin's
expedition, was an eminently competent officer. Wherever we find him in
charge of a section, the work is well done. His Atlas contained some
extremely beautiful work. There is no reason whatever for suggesting that
it was not his own work. He certainly saw no chart of Flinders, except
the one shown to him at Port Jackson, until the Atlas to the Voyage to
Terra Australis was publishe