The stone here is mostly of an iron-grey colour, heavy, and porous; and there were marks upon the sides of the middle cavern which might have arisen either from a sulphureous substance yielded by the stone when in a state of ignition, or from an impregnated water draining through the roof during a succession of time; upon the whole, though it seemed probable that these caverns owe their origin to the same cause as the subterraneous canal at Menil, the marks of fire in them were neither distinct nor unequivocal.  The position of these long, winding excavations, in a country nearly level and of small elevation, appeared to be the most extraordinary circumstance attending them; but in this island they are commonly so situate, particularly that remarkable one, of which a detailed account is given in Grant’s History of Mauritius from M. de St. Pierre.

Quitting Le Tamarin with M. Curtat, I went to the town of Port Louis, to take up my residence for a few days with my friend Pitot, the captain-general having granted a permission to that effect.  One of the objects for which I had asked the permission, was to obtain a further one to visit La Poudre d’Or and Flacq, on the north-east side of the island; but my application was refused after two or three days consideration, and accompanied with an order to return immediately to Wilhems Plains.  It appeared that general De Caen had received a letter of reproach from governor King of Port Jackson, inclosing, it was said, a copy of that I had written to the governor in August 1804, wherein my reception and treatment at Mauritius were described in colours not calculated to gratify the general’s feelings; it was even considered, and perhaps was in him, a great act of forbearance that he did not order me to be closely confined in the tower.

During this short residence in town, the attentions of my friend Pitot, of captain Bergeret, and several other French inhabitants were such as bespoke a desire to indemnify me for the ill treatment of their governor, whose conduct seemed to be generally disapproved; my acquaintance with major Dunienville of La Savanne was renewed, as also with M. Boand, the good Swiss, whose anxiety to serve me when a prisoner in the Cafe Marengo, had not lost any thing of its ardour.  At the Garden Prison, which I could not refrain from visiting, there was no one but the old serjeant, the six or eight Englishmen in the island being kept at the Grande Riviere.  In returning to Wilhems Plains I made a tour by the district of Mocha, both to see that part of the island and to visit M. Huet de Froberville, with whom his intimacy with the good family at the Refuge had brought me acquainted; this gentleman was nephew of Huetius, the celebrated bishop of Avranches, and author of Sidner, or the dangers of imagination, a little work published in Mauritius.

JUNE 1806