Le Geographe sailed from Mauritius on December 15, and reached Europe without the occurrence of any further incidents calling for comment. She entered the port of Lorient on March 24, 1804. Captain Milius decided not to make for Havre, whence the expedition had sailed in 1800, in consequence of what had happened to Le Naturaliste on her return to Europe in the previous year. War was declared by the British Government against France in May, and every captain in King George's navy was alert and eager to get in a blow upon the enemy. The frigate Minerva, Captain Charles Buller, sighted Le Naturaliste in the Channel, stopped her, and insisted, despite her passport, on taking her into Portsmouth. She was detained there from May 27 till June 6, when the Admiralty, being informed of what had occurred, ordered her immediate release. She left Portsmouth and arrived at Havre on the same day, June 6, 1803. Perhaps nothing can convey more effectually the utter weariness and depression of officers, staff, and crew, than the language in which Freycinet chronicled the return. It might be supposed, he wrote, that the end of the voyage would be heralded with joy. But they were themselves surprised to find that they were but slightly touched with pleasure at seeing again the shores of their own country after so long an absence. "It might be said that the very sight of our ship, recalling too strongly the sufferings of which we had been the victims, poisoned all our affections. It was not until we were far away from the coast that our souls could expand to sentiments of happiness which had been so long strangers to us." This, surely, was not the language of men who believed that they had accomplished things for which the world would hold them in honour. It was not the language of triumphant discoverers, whose good fortune it had been to reveal unknown coasts, and to finish that complete map of the continents which had been so long a-making. Would it, one wonders, have made Freycinet a little happier had he known that at this very time the English navigator who had made the discoveries for which Baudin's expedition was sent out, was held in the clutch of General Decaen in Mauritius, and that the way was clear to hurry on the publication of forestalling maps and records whilst Flinders was, as it were, battened under hatches? CHAPTER 11. RESULTS. Establishment of the First Empire. Reluctance of the French Government to publish a record of the expedition. Report of the Institute. The official history of the voyage authorised. Peron's scientific work. His discovery of Pyrosoma atlanticum. Other scientific memoirs. His views on the modification of species. Geographical results. Freycinet's charts.