vestigator; but my confidence in the justice and
liberality of the French government overcame them; and had general
Magallon remained governor, this confidence would most probably have been
justified by the event.

How my reasons for stopping at Mauritius were worded in the log book, I
certainly do not remember correctly, nor how far they were accompanied
with explanations; and particular care has been taken to prevent me
giving the words themselves; but is it possible to suppose, that
suspecting the war and entertaining inimical designs, I should have
inserted this suspicion and these designs in my common journal? Or that,
having done so, the book would have been put into the hands of general De
Caen's secretary, and these very passages pointed out for him to copy?
Yet the reasons alleged in the Moniteur, to be true, require no less.

The assertion that I acknowledge to have deviated _voluntarily_ from my
route, for the Isle of France was not in my passage--if voluntarily mean,
_without necessity_, must be false altogether. I had intended to pass the
island without stopping, and probably said so; but that the intention was
altered voluntarily, could not have been said, for the _necessity_
arising from the bad state of the schooner was alleged for it. Whether
Mauritius be in the passage from Timor to the Cape of Good Hope, any
seaman or geographer who knows the trade winds, can tell: it is as much
in the passage as is the Cape in going from Europe to India. The above
assertion induced me to examine captain Cook's track from Timor to the
Cape, as it is traced upon Arrowsmith's general chart, and to measure the
distance from a certain part of it to Port Louis, and from thence to
regain the track really made; and I found that his distance would not
have been increased so much as _one hundred miles_; or less than the half
of what ships augment their distance by stopping at Table Bay, in their
route to India. It may perhaps be said, that my _voluntary_ deviation and
the island not being in the passage, apply only to my intention of
passing Mauritius and then changing it. If so, the assertion could only
be made for superficial readers, and contains nothing; such, in fact, are
all the charges when duly examined, not excepting the pretence that the
passport was _exclusively for the Investigator_; and more has already
been said upon them than is due to their real importance.

These Moniteurs, however, informed me of two materia