On the fourth of April 1891, Gauguin, abandoning Paris, started on his voyage of discovery to Tahiti. Morice, in his interesting book on Gauguin, declares that when the decision was irrevocably made, and the mission to Tahiti had been stamped with official approval, Gauguin's self-possession momentarily abandoned him, and he broke down, and wept. And when Morice asked the reason, he replied in these strange, tragic, touching words:-- "Listen to me.... I have never known how to keep alive both my family and my thought. I have not even been able, up to now, to keep alive my thought alone. And now that I can hope for the future, I feel more terribly than I have ever felt, the horror of the sacrifice I have made, which is utterly irreparable." With this knowledge in his heart, Gauguin abandoned civilization. [Footnote 1: _Les Marges_, Paris, May 15, 1918.] [Footnote 2: Gauguin had also undoubtedly read Loti's book. His letters show that before deciding upon Tahiti he had considered the possibility of going to Tonkin or Madagascar.] [Footnote 3: It may be noticed that Gauguin received no financial profit whatever from this performance, and Verlaine very little.] PART IV: THE RETURN TO SAVAGERY 1891-1895 I Tahiti, the largest of the French Society Islands, lies in the South Pacific Ocean. That is about the limit of the average person's knowledge. Many perhaps understand vaguely that the climate is tropical but modified by sea breezes, the scenery wonderful, the people famous for beauty and licentiousness. Nevertheless, a more thorough knowledge of the island's mysterious racial story could not fail to interest. Tahiti, Samoa (known to us through Stevenson), Hawaii, New Zealand and the Marquesas (familiar to readers of Melville's "Omoo"), which are the chief links in that story, were all, at the time the islands were discovered, inhabited by the same people and a people utterly different in appearance from the woolly-haired Papuans of New Guinea and Fiji, or from the straight-haired Malays of the peninsula, made familiar to us through the stories of Joseph Conrad. These island people, the Polynesians, were found speaking all the same tongue, though in different dialects; they had, for the most part, the same social organization and their religion, manners and customs were very similar; they had, in many cases, traditions pointing to a common place of origin in the island of Samoa. And yet from Samoa they lived separated by thousands of miles of intervening ocean, still imperfectly known, abounding in coral reefs, liable to dangerous storms, full of shifting currents. How then had they reached Tahiti?