as
he saw it."

I reminded him of James Huneker's words about Gauguin: "He is yet
for the majority, though he may be the Paint God of the Twentieth
century. Paint was his passion. With all his realism, he was a
symbolist, a master of decoration."

Past the governor's mansion, we turned sharply up the hill. Apart
from all other dwellings, on a knoll, stood a Marquesan house. As we
followed the steep trail past it, I called, "_Kaoha!_"

"_I hea?_" said a woman, "_Karavario?_ Where do you go? To Calvary?"

There was a sad astonishment in her tone, that we should make the
arduous climb to the cemetery where no dead of ours lay interred.

A fairly broad trail wound about the hill, the trail over which the
dead and the mourners go, and the way was through a vast
cocoanut-orchard, the trees planted with absolute regularity lifting
their waving fronds seventy or eighty feet above the earth. There
was no underbrush between the tall gray columns of the palms, only a
twisted vegetation covered the ground, and the red volcanic soil of
the trail, cutting through the green, was like a smear of blood.

The road was long and hot. Halting near the summit, we looked upward,
and I was struck with emotion as when in the courtyard I saw the
group of the crucifixion. A cross forty feet high, with a Christ
nailed upon it, all snow-white, stood up against the deep blue sky.
It was like a note of organ music in the great gray cathedral of the
palms.

Another forty minutes climbing brought us to the foot of the white
symbol. A half-acre within white-washed palings, like any country
graveyard, lay on the summit of the mountain.

To find Gauguin's grave we began at the entrance and searched row by
row. The graves were those of natives, mounds marked by small stones
along the sides, with crosses of rusted iron filigree showing skulls
and other symbols of death, and a name painted in white, mildewing
away. Farther on were tombs of stone and cement, primitive and
massive, defying the elements. Upon one was graven, "_Ci Git Daniel
Vaimai, Kata-Kita_, 1867-1907. R.I.P." The grave of a catechist, a
native assistant to the priests. Beneath another lay "August Jorss,"
he who had ordered the Golden Bed in which I slept. Most conspicuous
of all was a mausoleum surrounded by a high, black, iron railing
brought from France. On this I climbed to read while perched on the
points:

"_Ici repose Mg. Illustrissime et Reverendissime_ Rog. Jh. Martin,"