True, Flinders
Had A Passport From The French Government, But It Was Made Out, Not For
The Cumberland But For The Investigator.
To take advantage of such a
point, when the Investigator had had to be abandoned as unseaworthy, was
manifestly
To seize the flimsiest pretext for imprisoning the man whom
the winds and waves had brought within his power.* (* "C'etait une
chicane," says M. Henri Prentout, page 382.) But Decaen was in the temper
for regarding the English navigator as a spy, and he imprisoned him first
and looked for evidence to justify himself afterwards. He had just read
Peron's report; and "it was not unnatural," says a learned French
historian somewhat naively, "that the Captain-General should attribute to
the English savant the intention of playing at Port Louis the role that
our naturalist had played at Port Jackson."* (* Ibid.) The imputation is
unjust to Peron, who had not "spied" in Port Jackson, because the English
there had manifested no disposition to conceal. Nothing that he reported
was what the Government had wished him not to see; they had helped him to
see all that he desired; and his preposterous political inferences,
though devoid of foundation, hardly amounted to a positive breach of
hospitality. Besides, had Decaen feared that the release of Flinders
would be dangerous because he might report the weak state of the defences
of the island, the same would have applied to the liberation of the
junior officers and men of the Cumberland. They, however, were permitted
to return to England after a brief period of detention.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 124 of 299
Words from 34387 to 34648
of 83218
