King Solomon's Mines (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by H. Rider Haggard

  As we travelled, Infadoos told us that there was another pass over the mountains to the north of the one followed by Solomon’s great road, or rather that there was a place where it was possible to climb down the wall of cliff that separated Kukuanaland from the desert, and was broken by the towering shapes of Sheba’s Breasts. It appeared, too, that rather more than two years previously a party of Kukuana hunters had descended this path into the desert in search of ostriches, whose plumes were much prized among them for war head-dresses, and that in the course of their hunt they had been led far from the mountains, and were much troubled by thirst. Seeing, however, trees on the horizon, they made towards them, and discovered a large and fertile oasis of some miles in extent, and plentifully watered. It was by way of this oasis that he suggested that we should return, and the idea seemed to us a good one, as it appeared that we should escape the rigours of the mountain pass, and as some of the hunters were in attendance to guide us to the oasis, from which, they stated, they could perceive more fertile spots far away in the desert.at

  Travelling easily, on the night of the fourth day’s journey we found ourselves once more on the crest of the mountains that separate Kukuanaland from the desert, which rolled away in sandy billows at our feet, and about twenty-five miles to the north of Sheba’s Breasts.

  At dawn on the following day, we were led to the commencement of a precipitous descent, by which we were to descend the precipice, and gain the desert two thousand and more feet below.

  Here we bade farewell to that true friend and sturdy old warrior, Infadoos, who solemnly wished all good upon us, and nearly wept with grief. “Never, my lords,” he said, “shall mine old eyes see the like of ye again. Ah! the way that Incubu cut his men down in the battle! Ah! for the sight of that stroke with which he swept off my brother Twala’s head! It was beautiful—beautiful! I may never hope to see such another, except perchance in happy dreams.”

  We were very sorry to part from him; indeed, Good was so moved that he gave him as a souvenir—what do you think?—an eye-glass. (Afterwards we discovered that it was a spare one.) Infadoos was delighted, foreseeing that the possession of such an article would enormously increase his prestige, and after several vain attempts actually succeeded in screwing it into his own eye. Anything more incongruous than the old warrior looked with an eye-glass I never saw. Eyeglasses don’t go well with leopard-skin cloaks and black ostrich plumes.

  Then, having seen that our guides were well laden with water and provisions, and having received a thundering farewell salute from the Buffaloes, we wrung the old warrior’s hand, and began our downward climb. A very arduous business it proved to be, but somehow that evening we found ourselves at the bottom without accident.

  “Do you know,” said Sir Henry that night, as we sat by our fire and gazed up at the beetling cliffs above us, “I think that there are worse places than Kukuanaland in the world, and that I have spent unhappier times than the last month or two, though I have never spent such queer ones. Eh! you fellows?”

  “I almost wish I were back,” said Good, with a sigh.

  As for myself, I reflected that all’s well that ends well; but in the course of a long life of shaves, I never had such shaves as those I had recently experienced. The thought of that battle still makes me feel cold all over, and as for our experience in the treasure chamber—!

  Next morning we started on a toilsome march across the desert, having with us a good supply of water carried by our five guides, and camped that night in the open, starting again at dawn on the morrow.

  By mid-day of the third day’s journey we could see the trees of the oasis of which the guides spoke, and by an hour before sundown we were once more walking upon grass and listening to the sound of running water.

  Chapter 20

  Found

  AND NOW I COME to perhaps the strangest thing that happened to us in all that strange business, and one which shows how wonderfully things are brought about.

  I was walking quietly along, some way in front of the other two, down the banks of the stream, which ran from the oasis till it was swallowed up in the hungry desert sands, when suddenly I stopped and rubbed my eyes, as well I might. There, not twenty yards in front, placed in a charming situation, under the shade of a species of fig tree, and facing to the stream, was a cosy hut, built more or less on the Kafir principle of grass and withes, only with a full-length door instead of a bee-hole.

  “What the dickens,” said I to myself, “can a hut be doing here!” Even as I said it, the door of the hut opened, and there limped out of it a white man clothed in skins, and with an enormous black beard. I thought that I must have got a touch of the sun. It was impossible. No hunter ever came to such a place as this. Certainly no hunter would ever settle in it. I stared and stared, and so did the other man, and just at that juncture Sir Henry and Good came up.

  “Look here, you fellows,” I said, “is that a white man, or am I mad?”

  Sir Henry looked, and Good looked, and then all of a sudden the lame white man with the black beard gave a great cry, and came hobbling towards us. When he got close, he fell down in a sort of faint.

  With a spring Sir Henry was by his side.

  “Great Powers!” he cried, “it is my brother George!”

  At the sound of the disturbance, another figure, also clad in skins, emerged from the hut, with a gun in his hand, and came running towards us. On seeing me he too gave a cry.

  “Macumazahn,” he halloed, “don’t you know me, Baas? I’m Jim the hunter. I lost the note you gave me to give to the Baas, and we have been here nearly two years.” And the fellow fell at my feet, and rolled over and over, weeping for joy.

  “You careless scoundrel!” I said; “you ought to be well hided.”

  Meanwhile the man with the black beard had recovered and got up, and he and Sir Henry were pump-handling away at each other, apparently without a word to say. But whatever they had quarrelled about in the past (I suspect it was a lady, though I never asked), it was evidently forgotten now.

  “My dear old fellow,” burst out Sir Henry at last, “I thought that you were dead. I have been over Solomon’s Mountains to find you, and now I come across you perched in the desert, like an old Aasvögel (vulture).”

  “I tried to go over Solomon’s Mountains nearly two years ago,” was the answer, spoken in the hesitating voice of a man who has had little recent opportunity of using his tongue, “but when I got here, a boulder fell on my leg and crushed it, and I have been able to go neither forward nor back.”

  Then I came up. “How do you do, Mr. Neville?” I said; “do you remember me?”

  “Why,” he said, “isn’t it Quatermain, eh, and Good too? Hold on a minute, you fellows, I am getting dizzy again. It is all so very strange, and, when a man has ceased to hope, so very happy.”

  That evening, over the camp fire, George Curtis told us his story, which, in its way, was almost as eventful as our own, and amounted shortly to this. A little short of two years before, he had started from Sitanda’s Kraal, to try and reach the mountains. As for the note I had sent him by Jim, that worthy had lost it, and he had never heard of it till to-day. But, acting upon information he had received from the natives, he made, not for Sheba’s Breasts, but for the ladder-like descent of the mountains down which we had just come, which was clearly a better route than that marked out in old Dom Silvestra’s plan. In the desert he and Jim suffered great hardships, but finally they reached this oasis, where a terrible accident befell George Curtis. On the day of their arrival, he was sitting by the stream, and Jim was extracting the honey from the nest of a stingless bee, which is to be found in the desert, on the top of the bank immediately above him. In so doing he loosed a great boulder of rock, which fell upon George Curtis’ right leg, crushing it frightfully. From that day he had been so dreadfully lame, that he had found it impossible to go either forward or back, and had preferred to take the chances of dying on the oasis to the certainty of perishing in the dese
rt.

  As for food, however, they had got on pretty well, for they had a good supply of ammunition, and the oasis was frequented, especially at night, by large quantities of game, which came thither for water. These they shot, or trapped in pitfalls, using their flesh for food, and, after their clothes wore out, their hides for covering.

  “And so,” he ended, “we have lived for nearly two years, like a second Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, hoping against hope that some natives might come here and help us away, but none have come. Only last night we settled that Jim should leave me, and try to reach Sitanda’s Kraal and get assistance. He was to go to-morrow, but I had little hope of ever seeing him back again. And now you, of all people in the world, you, who I fancied had long ago forgotten all about me, and were living comfortably in old England, turn up in a promiscuous way and find me where you least expected. It is the most wonderful thing I ever heard of, and the most merciful too.”

  Then Sir Henry set to work and told him the main facts of our adventures, sitting till late into the night to do it.

  “By Jove!” he said, when I showed him some of the diamonds; “well, at least you have got something for your pains, besides my worthless self.”

  Sir Henry laughed. “They belong to Quatermain and Good. It was part of the bargain that they should share any spoils there might be.”

  This remark set me thinking, and having spoken to Good I told Sir Henry that it was our unanimous wish that he should take a third share of the diamonds, or if he would not, that his share should be handed to his brother, who had suffered even more than ourselves on the chance of getting them. Finally, we prevailed upon him to consent to this arrangement, but George Curtis did not know of it till some time afterwards.

  And here, at this point, I think I shall end this history. Our journey across the desert back to Sitanda’s Kraal was most arduous, especially as we had to support George Curtis, whose right leg was very weak indeed, and continually throwing out splinters of bone; but we did accomplish it somehow, and to give its details would only be to reproduce much of what happened to us on the former occasion.

  Six months from the date of our re-arrival at Sitanda’s, where we found our guns and other goods quite safe, though the old scoundrel in charge was much disgusted at our surviving to claim them, saw us all once more safe and sound at my little place on the Berea, near Durban, where I am now writing, and whence I bid farewell to all who have accompanied me throughout the strangest trip I ever made in the course of a long and varied experience.

  Just as I had written the last word, a Kafir came up my avenue of orange trees, with a letter in a cleft stick, which he had brought from the post. It turned out to be from Sir Henry, and as it speaks for itself I give it in full.

  “Brayley Hall, Yorkshire

  “MY DEAR QUATERMAIN,—

  “I sent you a line a few mails back to say that the three of us, George, Good, and myself, fetched up all right in England. We got off the boat at Southampton, and went up to town You should have seen what a swell Good turned out the very next day, beautifully shaved, frock coat fitting like a glove, brand new eye-glass, &c &c. I went and walked in the park with him, where I met some people I know, and at once told them the story of his ‘beautiful white legs.’

  “He is furious, especially as some ill-natured person has printed it in a society paper.

  “To come to business, Good and I took the diamonds to Streeter’s to be valued, as we arranged, and I am really afraid to tell you what they put them at, it seems so enormous. They say that of course it is more or less guess-work, as such stones have never to their knowledge been put on the market in anything like such quantities It appears that they are (with the exception of one or two of the largest) of the finest water, and equal in every way to the best Brazilian stones. I asked them if they would buy them, but they said that it was beyond their power to do so, and recommended us to sell by degrees, for fear we should flood the market. They offer, however, a hundred and eighty thousand for a small portion of them.

  “You must come home, Quatermain, and see about these things, especially if you insist upon making the magnificent present of the third share, which does not belong to me, to my brother George. As for Good, he is no good. His time is too much occupied in shaving, and other matters connected with the vain adorning of the body. But I think he is still down on his luck about Foulata. He told me that since he had been home he hadn’t seen a woman to touch her, either as regards her figure or the sweetness of her expression.

  “I want you to come home, my dear old comrade, and buy a place near here. You have done your day’s work, and have lots of money now, and there is a place for sale quite close which would suit you admirably. Do come; the sooner the better; you can finish writing the story of our adventures on board ship. We have refused to tell the story till it is written by you, for fear that we shall not be believed If you start on receipt of this, you will reach here by Christmas, and I book you to stay with me for that. Good is coming, and George, and so, by the way, is your boy Harry (there’s a bribe for you). I have had him down for a week’s shooting, and like him. He is a cool young hand; he shot me in the leg, cut out the pellets, and then remarked upon the advantage of having a medical student in every shooting party.

  “Good-bye, old boy; I can’t say any more, but I know that you will come, if it is only to oblige

  “Your sincere friend,

  “HENRY CURTIS.

  “P.S.—The tusks of the great bull that killed poor Khiva have now been put up in the hall here, over the pair of buffalo horns you gave me, and look magnificent; and the axe with which I chopped off Twala’s head is stuck up over my writing table. I wish we could have managed to bring away the coats of chain armour.

  “H.C.”

  To-day is Tuesday. There is a steamer going on Friday, and I really think I must take Curtis at his word, and sail by her for England, if it is only to see my boy Harry and see about the printing of this history, which is a task I do not like to trust to anybody else.

  THE END.

  Endnotes

  Introduction

  1 (p. 7) Kukuanaland: In his 1905 New Illustrated Edition of King Solomon’s Mines, Haggard revealed that the fictitious Kukuanaland is based on Matabeleland, the southwestern part of today’s Zimbabwe between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, inhabited by the Ndebele people.

  2 (p. 7) Chaka: Known as “Great Zulu Warrior” and “The Black Napoleon,” the warrior king Chaka (1786-1828)—also known as Shaka Zulu built the Zulu tribe (of modern-day KwaZulu/Natal province) into a powerful nation skilled at hand-to-hand combat and united southern Africa’s tribes against colonial rule. For more information, see Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

  Chapter 1

  1 (p. 9) the old Colony: The Cape Colony was part of South Africa during the nineteenth-century British occupation. Originally founded in 1652 by the Dutch, the Cape Colony was taken over in 1806 by Britain, who ruled until it became known as the Cape Province after the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910.

  2 (p. 9) “Ingoldsby Legends”: Stories in prose and verse, many of them grotesque and humorous, by Canon Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845) were collected as The Ingoldsby Legends in 1840. Highly popular in Victorian times and after, The Ingoldsby Legends is now sadly out of print.

  3 (p.10) Khiva’s and ventvögel’s sad deaths: Haggard named Khiva and Ventvögel in his novel in tribute to two of his real-life servants who were murdered in 1877.

  4 (p. 11) Bamangwato: This region in present-day Botswana just north of South Africa (formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland) was established in 1780 by the Bamangwato tribe, which now calls itself the Bangwato.

  5 (p. 11) the Diamond Fields: In 1869 diamonds were discovered in Barkley West, on the Vaal River in South Africa, a region that came to be known as the Diamond Fields. The city of Kimberly, which be
came the diamond capital, quickly grew up. As recently as 1964, a new mine opened in the region.

  6 (p. 13) the tenth commandment: Haggard mentions the biblical commandment (Exodus 20:17) against envy: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour‘s” (King James Version; henceforth, KJV).

  7 (p. 14) Sir Garnet: Viscount Garnet Joseph Wolseley (1833-1913) was the most renowned and successful soldier of the Victorian era. The librettist W. S. Gilbert is said to have used Wolseley as “the very model of a modern major-general” in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance (1879). See Halik Kochanski, Sir Garnet Wolseley: Victorian Hero (London: Hambledon Press, 1999).

  8 (p. 14) Madeira chair: Wickerwork chair originally made on the island of Madeira, which lies some 350 miles from the African coast and was discovered by the Portuguese in 1418. Madeira wickerwork is made from a local willow-like bush, the vime, whose flexible branches are used in making chairs, tables, and baskets. Madeira wicker was widely exported beginning around 1850.

  9 (p. 15) Inyati: This remote site in what today is Zimbabwe was in Haggard’s time a station of the London Missionary Society, which attempted to convert the local peoples.

  Chapter 2

  1 (p. 18) The Legend of Solomon’s Mines: Haggard here refers to the longstanding legend that the biblical King Solomon’s gold was brought to him by the Queen of Sheba from the land of Ophir. In 2002 London-based Afghan travel writer Tahir Shah published In Search of King Solomon’s Mines (London: John Murray), which suggests that Ophir was present-day Ethiopia. Shah’s quixotic travel narrative is an entertaining, although quite different, elaboration on some of the same myths that preoccupied Haggard a century earlier.