King Solomon's Mines (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Pontius Pilate” (Katz, p. 150). Katz concludes that Haggard was “an imperial propagandist, a man who made use of every opportunity to advance matters relating to Empire.... Through his fiction, the ideas and attitudes that accrue to imperialism were conveyed almost effortlessly to the largely uncritical and accepting reader.... His fiction, only superficially innocuous, contributed generously to the process of shaping the imperial mentality” (p. 153).
    One of the advantages of historical hindsight is that we may read King Solomon’s Mines today as a period piece, with a conscious awareness of its imperialist messages. No matter how much Haggard may seem to be a critic of Victorian society, in many ways King Solomon’s Mines at its most sincere reinforces the deepest beliefs of its day. Thus, when Sir Henry offers to Umbopa a cherished credo without a trace of irony and it is wholly accepted by the noble African, the words seem to come from Haggard’s own heart:
    “But there is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if
he sets his heart to it. There is nothing, Umbopa, that he cannot do,
there are no mountains he may not climb, there are no deserts he
cannot cross ... if love leads him and he holds his life in his hand
counting it as nothing, ready to keep it or to lose it as Providence may
order” (p. 49).
    In this declaration, Haggard is close to Baden-Powell’s exhortations in his scouting guide, as well as literary friends like the poet William Ernest Henley (1849-1903). Henley’s most famous poem, “Invictus” (written in 1875), is a forthright assertion of Victorian self-possession: “It matters not how strait the gate, / How charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul.”
    Unlike the reader of 1885, we do not need to accept the underlying political, social, gender, and racial theories of King Solomon’s Mines as self-evident. Bolstered with recent publications by such excellent researchers as Stephen Coan, Gerald Monsman, and James Danly, among others (see “For Further Reading”), we may appreciate what is still effective and exciting in Haggard’s book, while discarding what is obsolete, or even potentially perilous.
     
    Benjamin Ivry is the author of biographies of Arthur Rimbaud (Absolute Press), Francis Poulenc (Phaidon), and Maurice Ravel (Welcome Rain Publishers). His poetry collection Paradise for the Portuguese Queen (Orehises) appeared in 1998. He has also translated many books from the French by such authors as André Gide, Jules Verne, and Balthus.

Dedication.

    This faithful but unpretending record
of a remarkable adventure
is hereby respectfully dedicated
by the narrator,
ALLAN QUATERMAIN,
to all the big and little boys
who read it.

Chapter 1
    I Meet Sir Henry Curtis
    IT Is A CURIOUS thing that at my age—fifty-five last birthday—I should find myself taking up a pen to try and write a history. I wonder what sort of a history it will be when I have done it, if I ever come to the end of the trip! I have done a good many things in my life, which seems a long one to me, owing to my having begun so young, perhaps. At an age when other boys are at school, I was earning my living as a trader in the old Colony. 1 I have been trading, hunting, fighting, or mining ever since. And yet it is only eight months ago that I made my pile. It is a big pile now I have got it—I don’t yet know how big—but I don’t think I would go through the last fifteen or sixteen months again for it; no, not if I knew that I should come out safe at the end, pile and all. But then I am a timid man, and don’t like violence, and am pretty sick of adventure. I wonder why I am going to write this book: it is not in my line. I am not a literary man, though very devoted to the Old Testament and also to the “Ingoldsby Legends.” 2 Let me try and set down my reasons, just to see if I have any.
    First reason: Because Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John