Flinders, in the decrepit little Cumberland, put into Port Louis, Mauritius, on December 16, 1803. He was not permitted to sail out again till July 1810; and then he was a broken man, smitten with diseases, the painful product of exposure, shipwreck, confinement in a tropical climate, anxiety, and bitter years of heart-sickness and weary disappointment; yet a brave man still, with some hope nobly burning in the true hero's heart of him; but with less vitality than hope, so that he could do no more than write his big book of travel, and then lie down to die. Many loose statements have been written about the use which the French made of Flinders' charts while he was held in captivity. It has been too often taken for granted that the evidence of plagiarism is beyond dispute. Not only popular writers, but historians with claims to be considered scientific, are substantially in agreement on this point. Two examples will indicate what is meant. Messrs. Becke and Jeffery, in their Naval Pioneers of Australia (page 216), assert that "among other indignities he suffered, he found that the charts taken from him by Decaen had been appropriated to Baudin's exploring expedition." Again, to take a work appealing to a different section of readers, the Cambridge Modern History also charges the French with "the use of his papers to appropriate for their ships the credit of his discoveries."* (* Volume 9 page 739 (Professor Egerton). Two more examples may be cited. Thus, Laurie, Story of Australasia (1896) page 86. "He found that his journals and charts had been stolen by the French governor of the Mauritius and transferred to Paris, where the fullest advantage was taken of them by M. Peron." Again, Jose, Australasia (1901) page 21: "His maps were taken to France to be published there with French names as the work of French explorers.") The charge is, it will be observed, that not only did the French governor of Mauritius imprison the English navigator despite his passport, detaining him years after the other members of the Cumberland's company had been liberated, but that Flinders' charts and papers were improperly used in the preparation of the history of Baudin's expedition. Indeed, the accusation is equivalent to one of garrotting: that General Decaen seized and bound his victim, robbed him, and enabled Freycinet and Peron to use his work as their own. So widely has this view been diffused, that probably few will be prepared for the assurance that there is no evidence to support it. On the contrary, as will be shown, neither Peron nor Freycinet ever saw any chart or journal taken from Flinders. Use was made, it is believed, of one British chart which may possibly have been his--that embodying a drawing of Port Phillip--but reasons will be given for the opinion that this, whether it was Flinders' chart or Murray's, was seen by the French before Baudin's ships left Sydney, and was certainly not copied at Mauritius.