The Gauguin who sought solitude of far-off Hiva-Hoa was not the Gauguin of ten years before. He was an extinct volcano, a burned-out crater. And he was destined to find only death in this last solitude. Nevertheless, before death came, his art attained its final summit of expression. Pictures like the _Jeune Fille à l'Eventail_ (1902) or the magnificent _Contes Barbares_ (also 1902) in which the Marquesas type appears, are the last word of Gauguin's gospel of beauty, the revelation of a new heaven and earth. The flame burned clear in him just before the close--then the shattered body yielded and all was darkness. III The Marquesas Islands are small and, in contrast to the coral and basaltic formation of Tahiti, of volcanic origin. They lie about a thousand miles nearer to the equator and this makes their climate more humid and less supportable to white men. Owing to this fact, and to the fact that they are out of the track of steamers between San Francisco and Sydney, they have preserved more of their unspoilt character. The natives are said to be the finest in appearance of any Polynesian peoples. In distinction to the Tahitians, who are either red or olive brown, their skin is largely of a clear golden color. In this they resemble the Maories of New Zealand, as in the practice of face-tattooing common among the males. They were formerly great fighters and ferocious cannibals, as Herman Melville's "Omoo" tells us. The first white settlers amongst them were French Roman Catholic missionaries who, by buying up most of the valuable land, by discouraging the drink traffic and by preventing other familiar colonial abuses, have succeeded in preserving the native stock fairly well. The Marquesas have never become the sink of vice and corruption which is Tahiti. It was on the chief island of this group that Gauguin installed himself. His capital enabled him to buy a plot of ground and to start constructing another house. This, like his house in Tahiti, was ornamented with bas-reliefs in wood and large decorative paintings. In the garden, stood a rude clay statue--a sort of combination of a Buddha and a Maori idol--under a canopy. Gauguin called this statue Te Atua--the God, and was reported to say his prayers to it every day. On the base of the statue were engraved these words, taken from Morice's verses in "Noa Noa": "The Gods are dead and Tahiti dies of their death, The sun, which once lit the isles with flame, now sleeps, A sorrowful sleep, with brief dream wakenings: Now the shadow of regret pierces the eyes of Eve, Who pensively smiles, gazing upon her breast, Sterile gold, sealed by some divine design."