of the port and an interpreter. These
gentlemen, after speaking with an aide-de-camp, told me that the
captain-general was at dinner, and we must return in an hour or two; and
they took me to a shady place which seemed to be the common lounge for
the officers connected with the port. There were some who spoke English,
and by way of passing the time, they asked if I had really come from
Botany Bay in that little vessel; whether a corvette, sent out the night
before to observe my motions, had been seen; and if I had not sent a boat
on shore in the night? Others asked questions of monsieur Baudin's
conduct at Port Jackson, and of the English colony there; and also
concerning the voyage of monsieur Flinedare, of which, to their surprise,
I knew nothing, but afterwards found it to be my own name which they so
pronounced.

In two hours we again went to the government house, and the officers
entered to render their account, leaving me at the door for half an hour
longer. At length the interpreter desired me to follow him, and I was
shown into a room where two officers were standing at a table; the one a
shortish thick man in a laced round jacket, the other a genteel-looking
man whose blood seemed to circulate more tranquilly. The first, which was
the captain-general De Caen, fixed his eyes sternly upon me, and without
salutation or preface demanded my passport, my commission! Having glanced
over them, he asked in an impetuous manner, the reason for coming to the
Isle of France in a small-schooner with a passport for the Investigator?
I answered in a few words, that the Investigator having become rotten,
the governor of New South Wales had given me the schooner to return to
England; and that I had stopped at the island to repair my vessel and
procure water and refreshments. He then demanded the order for embarking
in the schooner and coming to the Isle of France; to which my answer was,
that for coming to the island I had no order, necessity had obliged me to
stop in passing--my order for embarking in the Cumberland was on board.
At this answer, the general lost the small share of patience of which he
seemed to be possessed, and said with much gesture and an elevated
voice--"You are imposing on me, sir! (_Vous m'en imposez, monsieur!_)
It is not probable that the governor of New South Wales should send away
the commander of an expedition on discovery in so small a vessel!--" He
then gave back my passport and commission, and I ma