text: In his account, Vivès reports much speculation about Baret's sex early in the voyage and asserts that Baret claimed to be a eunuch when confronted directly by La Giraudais (whose own official log has not survived). Bougainville's account of Baret's unmasking on Tahiti is not corroborated by the other journal accounts of the expedition, although Vivès describes a similar incident in which Baret was immediately pointed out as a woman by the Tahitian Ahu-toru on board the ship. Vivès also describes a different incident on New Ireland in mid-July in which Baret was caught off-guard, stripped, and "examined" by a group of other servants on the expedition. Duclos-Guyot and Nassau-Siegen also recorded that Baret had been discovered to be a woman in New Ireland, but without mentioning details.
  Ahu-toru travelled back to France with the expedition and was subsequently questioned at some length about Baret. Modern scholars now believe that Ahu-toru thought that Baret was a transvestite, or mahu. However, other Tahitian natives reported the presence of a woman in Bougainville's expedition to later visitors to the island, including James Cook in 1769 and Domingo de Bonechea in 1772, which indicates that her sex was known to the Tahitians if not to her shipmates at the time she visited the island.
  After crossing the Pacific, the expedition was desperately short of food. After a brief stop for supplies in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), the ships made a longer stop at the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. This island, then known as Isle de France, was an important French trading station. Commerson was delighted to find that his old friend and fellow botanist Pierre Poivre was serving as governor on the island, and Commerson and Baret remained behind as Poivre's guests. Bougainville probably also actively encouraged this arrangement, as it allowed him to rid himself of the problem of a woman illegally onboard his expedition.