Baudin's ships rounded South-East Cape on January 13 (1802), and sailed up Dentrecasteaux Channel into Port Cygnet. Péron found plenty to interest him in the fauna of this strange land, and above all in the aboriginals with whom he was able to come in contact. His chapters on the three months' stay in southern and eastern Tasmania are full of pleasant passages, for the naturalist had a pretty talent for descriptive writing, was pleased with the novel things he saw, and communicated his pleasure to his pages. Though he lacked the large grasp, the fertile suggestiveness, of great scientific travellers like Humboldt, Darwin, and Alfred Russel Wallace, he was curious, well informed, industrious, and sympathetic; and as he was the first trained anthropologist to enter into personal relations with the Tasmanian blacks--a race now become extinct under the shrivelling touch of European civilisation--his writings concerning them have great value, quite apart from the pleasure with which they may be read. A couple of pages describing Péron's first meeting with the aboriginals when out looking for water, and the amazement of the savages on encountering the whites--an incident given with delightful humour, and at the same time showing close and careful observation--will be likely to be welcomed by the reader.
"In pursuing our route we came to a little cove, at the bottom of which appeared a pretty valley, which seemed to offer the prospect of finding sweet water. That consideration decided M. H. Freycinet to land there. We had scarcely put foot upon the shore, when two natives made their appearance upon the peak of a neighbouring hill. In response to the signs of friendship that we made to them, one of them leapt, rather than climbed, from the height of the rock, and was in the midst of us in the twinkling of an eye. He was a young man of from twenty-two to twenty-four years of age, of generally strong build, having no other physical fault than the extreme slenderness of legs and arms that is characteristic of his race. His face had nothing ferocious or forbidding about its expression; his eyes were lively and intelligent, and his manner expressed at once good feeling and surprise. M. Freycinet having embraced him, I did the same; but from the air of indifference with which he received this evidence of our interest, it was easy to perceive that this kind of reception had no signification for him. What appeared to affect him more, was the whiteness of our skin. Wishing to assure himself, doubtless, if our bodies were the same colour all over, he lifted up successively our waistcoats and our shirts; and his astonishment manifested itself in loud cries of surprise, and above all in an extremely rapid stamping of the feet.
"But our boat appeared to interest him even more than our persons; and after he had examined us for some minutes, he sprang into it. There, without troubling himself at all about the sailors whom he found in it, he appeared as if absorbed in his examination of the novelty. The thickness of the planks, the curves, the rudder, the oars, the masts, the sails--all these he observed with that silent and profound attention which are the unquestionable signs of a deep interest and a reflective admiration. Just then, one of the boatmen, wishing doubtless to increase his surprise, handed him a glass bottle filled with the arack which formed part of the provisions of our search party. The shining of the glass at first evoked a cry of astonishment from the savage, who took the bottle and examined it for some moments. But soon, his curiosity returning to the boat, he threw the bottle into the sea, without appearing to have any other intention than that of getting rid of an object to which he was indifferent; and at once resumed his examination. Neither the cries of the sailor, who was concerned with the loss of the bottle of arack, nor the promptness of one of his comrades to jump into the water to recover it, appeared to concern him. He made various attempts to push the boat free, but the mooring-rope which held it fast making his efforts futile, he was constrained to abandon them, and returned to us, after having given us the most striking example we had ever had of attention and reflection among savage peoples."
Presently the companion of the young aboriginal came down the hill and joined the group. He was an older man, about fifty years of age, grey-bearded and grey-headed, with a frank and open countenance. He also was permitted to satisfy himself that the Frenchmen were white-bodied as well as white-faced; and being assured that there was nothing to fear from these strange visitors, he signalled to two black women, who had remained hidden during the earlier part of the interview. One was a gin of forty, the second aged about twenty-six; both were naked. The younger woman carried a black baby girl in a kangaroo skin, and Péron was pleased to observe the affectionate care she showed for her child. A surprise as great as that which the young male black had shown concerning the boat, was manifested by the younger woman in a pair of gloves. The weather being cold, a fire was lit, when one of the sailors, approaching it to warm himself, took off a pair of fur gloves which he was wearing. "The young woman, at the sight of that action, gave forth such a loud cry that we were at first alarmed; but we were not long in recognising the cause of her fright. We saw, from her expressions and gestures, that she had taken the gloves for real hands, or at least for a kind of living skin, that could be taken off, put in the pocket, and put on again at will. We laughed much at that singular error; but we were not so much amused at what the old man did a little later with a bottle of arack. 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, Péron 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." Péron 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 Péron, 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 Péron; 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.
The expedition encountered extremely bad weather along the eastern coast of Tasmania; where, also, Captain Baudin was too ill to superintend the navigation in person. He shut himself up in his cabin, and left the ship to his lieutenant, Henri de Freycinet. Le Naturaliste was separated from her consort during a furious gale which raged on March 7 and 8, and the two vessels did not meet again till both reached Port Jackson. While making for Bass Strait, Le Geographe fell in with a small vessel engaged in catching seals, with whose captain the French had some converse. He told them that the British Government had sent out special instructions to Port Jackson that, should the French exploring ships put in there, they were to be received "with all the regard due to the nature of their mission, and to the dignity of the nation to which they belonged"* (* Péron, 1824 edition 2 175.)--surely a noble piece of courtesy from the Government of a people with whom the French were then at war. It was this intimation, there can be no doubt, that a month later determined Baudin to go to Sydney, for Captain Hamelin of Le Naturaliste was not aware of his intention to do so, as will appear from the following chapter. Bass Strait was entered on March 27, and the ship followed the southern coast of Australia until the meeting with Flinders in Encounter Bay, as described in the earlier part of this book.
By this time, as has been related, scurvy was wreaking frightful havoc among the crew. Before the Encounter Bay incident occurred, the French sailors had expressed so much disgust with their putrid meat, weevilly biscuit, and stinking water, that some of them threw their rations overboard, even in the presence of the captain, preferring to endure the pangs of hunger rather than eat such revolting food. After Baudin had made those investigations which his means permitted in the region of the two large gulfs, the winter season was again approaching, when high winds and tempestuous seas might be anticipated. It was therefore hoped by all on board that when the commandant decided to steer for the shelter and succour of Port Jackson, he would, as it was only sensible that he should, take the short route through Bass Strait. In view of the distressed state of his company, it was positively cruel to think of doing otherwise. But there was, it seems, a peculiar vein of perversity in Baudin's character, which made him prone to do that which everybody wished him not to do. We may disregard many of the disparaging sentences in which Péron refers to "notre commandant"--never by name--because Péron so evidently detested Baudin that he is a doubtful witness in matters of conduct and character. We must also give due weight to the fact that we have no statement of Baudin's point of view on any matter for which he was blamed by colleagues who were at enmity with him. But even so, we have his unquestionable actions upon which to form a judgment; and it is difficult to characterise by any milder term than stupidity his determination to sail to Port Jackson from Kangaroo Island round by the south of Tasmania, a route at least six hundred miles out of his straight path. That he came to this decision after having himself sailed through Bass Strait from east to west, and thus learnt that the navigation was free from difficulty; when he had in his possession the charts of Bass and Flinders showing a clear course; during a period of storms when he would be quite certain to encounter worse weather by sailing farther south; when his crew were positively rotting with the scorbutic pestilence that made life all but intolerable to them, and attendance upon them almost too loathsome for endurance by the ship's surgeon; and when his supplies were at starvation limit in point of quantity and vermin-riddled in respect of quality that he resolved to take the long, stormy, southern route in face of these considerations, seems hardly to admit of explanation or excuse. "A resolution so singular spread consternation on board," wrote Péron; and it is not wonderful that it did. The consequence was that the voyage to Port Jackson made a story of privations pitiful to read. The bare fact that it took Baudin from May 8 to June 20, forty-three days, to sail from Kangaroo Island to Sydney, whilst Flinders in the Investigator, despite contrary winds, covered the distance by the Bass Strait route in thirty days (April 9 to May 9), including several days spent at King Island and Port Phillip, is sufficient to show how much Baudin's obtuse temper contributed to aggravate the distress of his people.