At Bruni Island, Peron and a party of his compatriots had an adventure with a party of twenty native women. He did not find them charming. All were in the condition in which Actaeon saw Diana, when "all undrest the shining goddess stood," though they did not, when discovered, glow with:
"such blushes as adorn The ruddy welkin or the purple morn."
Indeed, they appeared to be quite unaware that there was anything remarkable about their deficiency of clothing. "A naked Duke of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords" might have shocked them, but not merely because he was naked. They were greatly interested when, as a sign of friendliness, one of the Frenchmen, the doctor of Le Naturaliste, began to sing a song. The women squatted around, in attitudes "bizarres et pittoresques," applauding with loud cries. They were not, however, a group of ladies for whom the Frenchmen had any admiration to spare. Their black skins smeared with fish oil, their short, coarse, black hair, and their general form and features, were repulsive. Two or three young girls of fifteen or sixteen years of age the naturalist excepted from his generally ungallant expressions of disgust. They were agreeably formed, and their expression struck him as being more engaging, soft, and affectionate, "as if the better qualities of the soul should be, even amidst hordes of savages, the peculiar appanage of youth, grace, and beauty." Peron remarked that nearly all the older women were marked with wounds, "sad results of bad treatment by their ferocious spouses," for the black was wont to temper affection with discipline, and to emphasise his arguments with a club.
If the black gins gave no satisfaction to the aesthetic sense of the naturalist, his white skin appeared to be no less displeasing to them; and one of them made a kindly effort to colour him to her fancy. She was one of the younger women, and had been regarding him with perhaps the thought that he was not beyond the scope of art, though Nature had offended in making his tint so pale. Rouge, says Mr. Meredith, is "a form of practical adoration of the genuine." Charcoal was this lady's substitute for rouge. A face, to please her, should be black; and, with a compassionate desire to improve on one of Nature's bad jobs, she set to work. She approached Peron, took up some charred sticks, rubbed them in her hand, and then made advances to apply the black powder to his face. He gravely submitted--in the sacred cause of science, it may be supposed--and one of his colleagues was favoured with similar treatment. "Haply, for I am black," he might have exclaimed with Othello after the treatment; and the makers of charcoal complexions were charmed with their handiwork. "We appeared then to be a great subject of admiration for these women; they seemed to regard us with a tender satisfaction," wrote Peron; and the reflection occurred to him "that the white European skin of which our race is so proud is really a defect, a sort of deformity, which must in these distant climates give place to the hue of charcoal, dull red ochre, or clay." Bonaparte would not have concurred; for he, as Thibaudeau tells us, emphatically told his Council of State, "I am for the white race because I am a white man myself; that is an argument quite good enough for me." It was hardly an argument at all; but it sufficed.