Imprisonment of Flinders in Mauritius. The French atlas of 1807. The French charts and the names upon them. Hurried publication. The allegation that Peron acted under pressure. Freycinet's explanations. His failure to meet the gravest charge. Extent of the actual discoveries of Baudin, and nature of the country discovered. The French names in current use on the so-called Terre Napoleon coasts. Difficulty of identifying features to which Baudin applied names. Freycinet's perplexities. The new atlas of 1817. What happened to Matthew Flinders when, after a brief sojourn in Sydney Harbour, he left to continue his explorations in the northern waters of Australia, is generally known. While he was at work in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the condition of the Investigator caused him much uneasiness, and when she was overhauled, the rotten state of her timbers compelled him to return. She was then condemned as unseaworthy. On again sailing north in the Porpoise, he was wrecked on the Barrier Reef. Making his way back to Sydney in a small open boat built from the wreckage, and well named the Hope, he was given the use of the Cumberland, a mere barge of only twenty-nine tons, in which to carry himself and part of his shipwrecked company to England. Compelled by the leaky condition of the crazy little craft, and the inefficiency of the pumps, to put into Mauritius, then a French possession, he was detained as a prisoner by the French governor, General Decaen, for six and a half years. There is no need, for our immediate purpose, to linger over these occurrences, inviting as they are, with a glint of Stevensonian romance in the bare facts, and all the pathos that attaches to the case of a brave and blameless man thwarted and ruined by perversity and malignity. Frequently have the facts been wrongly written, as for instance when Blair states, in his Cyclopaedia of Australia, that Baudin in Le Geographe called at Mauritius after Flinders was imprisoned, and, instead of procuring his release, "persuaded the Governor to confine him more rigorously." Poor Baudin--he had been in his grave three months when Flinders appeared at the island in dire distress, and Le Geographe itself left the day before his arrival. What is clear, however, is that Flinders was detained in a captivity that broke down his health and wrecked his useful life, first on General Decaen's own responsibility, and later--though the evidence on this point is not specific--in accordance with influences from Paris; and that during his imprisonment an attempt was made to deprive him of credit for his discoveries by the publication of the first volume of the French official history and its accompanying atlas.