A squadron and troops were collecting here, the latter under General Abercrombie, for an expedition to the Mauritius. We were greatly disappointed, I must own, that our ship was not in a condition to proceed to sea, or we should have been chartered to convey troops and been witnesses of the triumphs we hoped they would achieve. My object is, however, to describe my own adventures in the pursuit of pacific commerce. I will thus only briefly say that the expedition arrived speedily off the Mauritius, the troops were landed, and that after some sharp fighting, by which we lost one hundred and fifty men killed and wounded, the French General, De Caen, capitulated. We had several sepoy regiments, and the French general, in order to inspire the colonial troops with contempt for them, publicly promised that whoever should capture a sepoy should have him for a slave; but the militia appear to have thought that by so doing they might possibly catch a Tartar, for not a sepoy was made prisoner. I made some satisfactory sales at Bourbon, and as soon as the ship was repaired she followed the men-of-war to the Isle of France. The island is about thirty-five miles long, and one hundred and fifteen in circumference, with a surface greatly diversified by hill and plain, wood and plantation, with several considerable mountains, the chief of which, Le Pouce and Pieter Botte, in the neighbourhood of Port Louis, are well-known. The harbour was a complete forest of masts, filled with vessels of all sorts and sizes, from the huge line-of-battle ship to the humble canoe, not unlike a butcher's tray, scooped out of a single log. The British flag waved triumphantly on all the batteries; and Indiamen, transport prizes, merchant craft of all descriptions, displayed English colours, in most cases flying over the French. Numerous boats, too, were plying to and fro filled with naval and military officers, captains of Indiamen, sailors, lascars, negroes, and Frenchmen, some on business, some on pleasure, but all seeming to be in a hurry. I looked out with no little curiosity for any craft which might answer the description of our late antagonist, the _Mignonne_. If she had entered the harbour, she had again escaped before the capture of the place, for she was nowhere to be seen. It would have been satisfactory to have seen our friend caged, but it was too probable that he was still roving over the ocean, on the watch to plunder any English craft he could venture to attack.