Flinders In March Urged
Colonel Monistrol To Intercede; Complained In May That The Manuscripts
Were Still Withheld; And, Being Unable
To make any impression on the
obdurate Decaen, completed his map with the aid of another journal kept
by Mr.
Akin, the master of the Investigator, who was a fellow-prisoner
until May 1805.
These remaining documents were not restored till August 1807, when
Flinders was invited to go to Port Louis from the house in the country
where part of his imprisonment was spent, and take possession of the
trunk. He found that rats had eaten their way into it, and had made great
havoc among his papers, totally destroying some. But the seals were
unbroken, and Flinders gave a receipt for the contents, acknowledging
that the most important documents had happily escaped the rats.* (*
Voyage 2 462.) He was an observant man, and if he had had any suspicion
that the charts had been tampered with, would have promptly said so.
There is not, however, the faintest reason for believing that the trunk
had been opened between December 1803, when Flinders was permitted to
take out the "greatest part" of his important papers, and August 1807,
when the remainder were restored to him. The only missing documents were
the few which the rats had eaten, the third log-book, which Decaen
refused to give up, and two packets of official despatches which the
Cumberland was carrying from Sydney to England, and which Colonel
Monistrol informed him had been "long ago disposed of." The Colonel
"supposed that something in them had contributed to my imprisonment."
They had been "disposed of" by being sent to Paris for the perusal of
Napoleon's Government.
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