As It
Contained A Great Part Of Our Drink, We Were Compelled To Take It From
Him, Which He Resented So Much That He Went Off With His Family, In Spite
Of All I Could Do To Detain Them Longer."
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.
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