days, and then allow her to proceed in execution of the orders her Captain has received from me."

The Slaney brought the letter and order, parts of which are extracted above, and having no frigate in company, I detained her as part of the force under my command, though she was, on the 8th, sent down to the Mamusson passage, with orders for Captain Green of the Daphne, and did not return until the evening of the 11th.

On the 8th of July, I was joined by a chasse-marée bringing a letter from Sir Henry Hotham, part of which is as follows:

Extract of a letter from Rear-Admiral Sir Henry Hotham, K. C. B. addressed to Captain Maitland, of H. M. S. Bellerophon, dated Superb, Quiberon Bay, July 7, 1815.

66

Having sent every ship and vessel out from this bay, to endeavour to intercept

Buonaparte, I am obliged to send the chasse marée, which has been employed in my communications with the Royalists, with this letter, to acquaint you that the Ferret brought me information last evening, after the Opossum had left me, from Lord Keith, that Government received, on the night of the 30th, an application from the rulers of France, for a passport and safe conduct for Buonaparte to America, which had been. answered in the negative, and, therefore, directing an increase of vigilance to intercept him but it remains quite uncertain where he will embark; and, although it would appear by the measures adopted at home, that it is expected he will sail from one of the northern ports, I am of opinion he will go from one of the southern places, and I think the information I sent you yesterday by the Opossum is very likely to be correct; namely, that he had taken the road to Rochefort; and that he will probably

C

embark in the frigates at Isle d'Aix; for which reason I am very anxious you should have force enough to stop them both, as the Bellerophon could only take one, if they separated, and that might not be the one he would be on board of. I have no frigate to send you; if one should join me in time, I will send her to you, and I hope you will have two twenty-gun ships with you. I imagine, from what you said in your letter by your barge, that you would not have kept the Endymion with you, especially as the Myrmidon would have rejoined you, by the arrangements I sent down by the Phoebe for Sir John Sinclair to take her place off the Mamusson; therefore, I trust that my last order to Captain Hope will not have deprived you of his assistance, but hope it may have put him in a better situation than before. The Liffey is seventy or eighty miles west from Bourdeaux, and the Pactolus, after landing some person in the Gironde,

goes off Cape Finisterre, where the Swiftsure is also gone; and many ships are looking out in the Channel and about the latitude of Ushant.

"Buonaparte is certainly not yet gone; I presume he would naturally await the answer from our Government, which only left London on the 1st; my own opinion is, that he will either go with a force that will afford him some kind of security, or in a merchant vessel to avoid suspicion.

"The orders from the Admiralty, received last evening, are, that the ships which are looking out for him, should remain on that service till further orders, or till they know he is taken, and not regard the time of ten days or a fortnight, which they first named: therefore you will govern yourself by that, and keep any ship you have with you till one of those events occurs, without attending,

to the ten days I specified in my letter to you by the Opossum yesterday, and make the same known to any ship you may communicate with. The information you sent me, which had been transmitted to you from Bourdeaux, is now proved to have been erroneous, by our knowing that Buonaparte was at Paris as late as the 30th of June, and that paper must have been written on the 29th, as you received it on the 30th. The Eridanus will not rejoin you; she has been stationed, by Lord Keith, off Brest."

"Let me know by the return of the chasse-marée, particularly, what ships you have with you, and where the other ships are, as far as you know, and what position you keep in. If you had ships enough to guard Basque roads, and the Channel between Isle d'Oleron and the long sand (where a frigate may pass), you would be sure of keeping them in, by anchoring; but