1803, to December 16th, 1803, of which I have no duplicate. 3rd, Two boxes of despatches; the one from his Excellency Governor King of 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."
- "Mattw. Flinders,
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.[1] 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
- ↑ Flinders' Papers.
