All civilised men with a little imagination have at some time in their lives shared the same illusion regarding the female savages of the Americas, confusing them with the graceful Tahitians, who are not savages at all. They form strange fantasies about these dusky creatures and picture them possessed of formidable and wonderful charms. “Mexican (or Guyanese, or Chilean, or young Comanche) girls”, they say, “are enchanting daughters of unfettered nature, with the warmth of the tropics, gazelles’ eyes, humming- birds’ voices, the suppleness of liana, the bravery of lionesses, the constancy of turtledoves; with the perfume of pineapple and the satiny skin of camellias; maidens worthy of an ideal love, like Chateaubriand’s Atala, Marmontel’s Cora or de Jouy’s Amazily.”

Young idiots! Not-so-young idiots! You are the ones behaving like children of nature, by clinging to such illusions! You only have to have crossed the Atlantic once or twice to have been disabused of these poetic fancies. As for the tropics, you should know by now that the tropic of Cancer is no warmer than that of Capricorn; that young Comanche girls with gazelles’ eyes have the intelligence of Canada geese; that their voices are grating; that their skin is either rough or greasy to the touch, and the colour of rusty iron; that their bravery extends only to cutting the throats of sleeping children; that their constancy lasts only twenty-four hours; that their perfume, not a bit like pineapple, is strong enough to kill the mosquitos which so torment Europeans.

Besides, you young poets, Chateaubriand’s Atala was a white European girl, not a female savage at all; no other maiden like Marmontel’s Cora has ever been seen in Peru; and de Jouy’s Amazily, who called herself Marina, was a real virago according to Cortez’s companions: she fully deserved the torture with which the Aztecs so often threatened her, and after living for six or seven years with the ravager of her country, otherwise known as the conqueror of Mexico, she married a plain corporal in the great man’s army. It is said, in fact, that she ended up carrying brandy kegs in a Spanish regiment and died an old vivandière.