"without losing an instant, a colonial vessel was immediately equipped and provided with as many scientific people as I could put into her, and despatched after Mons'r Baudin. The instruction I gave the midshipman who commanded her was to examine Storm Bay Passage and leave His Majesty's colours flying there with a guard, and that it was my intention to send an establishment there by the _Porpoise_. This order, you will observe, was a blind, and as such was to be communicated to Mons'r Baudin, as my only object was to make him acquainted with the reports I had heard, and to assure him and his masters that the King's claim would not be so easily given up. The midshipman in the _Cumberland_ had other private orders not to go to Storm Bay Passage, but to follow the French ships as far as King's Island, and that he was to make the pretext of an easterly wind forcing him into the straits, and as he was enjoined to survey King's Island and Port Phillip, that service he should perform before he went to Storm Bay Passage. "This had the desired effect. He overtook _Geographe_ and _Naturaliste_ at King's Island the day the _Naturaliste_ parted company with the _Geographe_ on the former returning to France, and as an officer of the colony was going passenger in her, the mid. was instructed to give him privately a packet for the Admiralty and Lord Hobart, in which, I believe, was one for you. These letters contained the particulars. The mid. was received by Mons'r Baudin with much kindness. In the latter's answer to me he felt himself rather hurt at the idea that 'had such an intention on his part existed, that he should conceal it.' However, he put it on the most amicable footing, altho' the mid. planted His Majesty's colours close to their tents, and kept them flying during the time the French ships stayed there." Notwithstanding their first little differences, King and Baudin parted the best of friends, and to an orphan asylum established by King in Sydney, Baudin sent a donation of £50; but King's action in sending the _Cumberland_ after him struck the Frenchman in a different light. He wrote to King telling him that if he had wanted to annex Van Diemen's Land he would have made no secret of it, that Tasman anyhow had not discovered it for the benefit of Englishmen only, and that--