Fred's Book Club: Mine, Mine, Mine!

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen and book lovers of all ages! This week on the Hump Day book feature known as the Humpback Writers (get it? ha ha) we have a classic adventure novel, one of the world's most famous, a novel that has set the tone for hundreds of imitators on page and screen, and so is likely to be shoved down the memory hole as soon as someone under age thirty realizes it ever existed. 

H. Rider Haggard was a classic Brit of his time, who spent years working in Britain's African colonies before beginning a career as a writer of adventure fiction. King Solomon's Mines, published in 1885, introduced his famous hero, hunter, and adventurer Allan Quatermain to the world. I think the words "hunter" and "colonies" are enough to explain why Haggard will one day be on the SJW chopping block.

But he shouldn't be. King Solomon's Mines is an extraordinary adventure, and a great yarn. It begins with Quatermain, who meets with one Sir Henry Curtis and a Captain Good. Sir Henry has been looking for his brother, who has gone missing in a supposed quest for the titular treasure. Quatermain has some information on that from a man he met named José Silvestre, and he shares the story:

“Then he groped in his shirt and brought out what I thought was a Boer tobacco pouch made of the skin of the Swart-vet-pens or sable antelope. It was fastened with a little strip of hide, what we call a rimpi, and this he tried to loose, but could not. He handed it to me. ‘Untie it,’ he said. I did so, and extracted a bit of torn yellow linen on which something was written in rusty letters. Inside this rag was a paper.

“Then he went on feebly, for he was growing weak: ‘The paper has all that is on the linen. It took me years to read. Listen: my ancestor, a political refugee from Lisbon, and one of the first Portuguese who landed on these shores, wrote that when he was dying on those mountains which no white foot ever pressed before or since. His name was José da Silvestra, and he lived three hundred years ago. His slave, who waited for him on this side of the mountains, found him dead, and brought the writing home to Delagoa. It has been in the family ever since, but none have cared to read it, till at last I did. And I have lost my life over it, but another may succeed, and become the richest man in the world—the richest man in the world. Only give it to no one, señor; go yourself!’

“Then he began to wander again, and in an hour it was all over.

“God rest him! he died very quietly, and I buried him deep, with big boulders on his breast; so I do not think that the jackals can have dug him up. And then I came away.”

“Ay, but the document?” said Sir Henry, in a tone of deep interest.

“Yes, the document; what was in it?” added the captain.

“Well, gentlemen, if you like I will tell you. I have never showed it to anybody yet except to a drunken old Portuguese trader who translated it for me, and had forgotten all about it by the next morning. The original rag is at my home in Durban, together with poor Dom José’s translation, but I have the English rendering in my pocket-book, and a facsimile of the map, if it can be called a map. Here it is.”

The map, of course, supposedly can lead one to the fabled mines of King Solomon himself, source of endless diamonds -- if one can survive. They arrange an expedition, one that requires crossing a desert. In the biggest gut-check I think I've ever seen in fiction, the expedition realizes that if the one source of water shown on the 300-year-old map is not active, or not there, or not exactly where the poor map says it will be, they will be doomed to a horrible death; they cannot carry enough water to make a round trip. And they are aware that no known expedition has ever survive this quest. 

People looking for racism in the book will find it easily enough. Some natives behave strangely when Captain Good removes his false teeth -- which to the isolated people would be like me seeing a guy pull off his head: 

“What does that beggar say?” asked Good.

“He says we are going to be killed,” I answered grimly.

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Good; and, as was his way when perplexed, he put his hand to his false teeth, dragging the top set down and allowing them to fly back to his jaw with a snap. It was a most fortunate move, for next second the dignified crowd of Kukuanas uttered a simultaneous yell of horror, and bolted back some yards.

“What’s up?” said I.

“It’s his teeth,” whispered Sir Henry excitedly. “He moved them. Take them out, Good, take them out!”

He obeyed, slipping the set into the sleeve of his flannel shirt.

In another second curiosity had overcome fear, and the men advanced slowly. Apparently they had now forgotten their amiable intention of killing us.

But the most determined, courageous, and clever character in the book is a black African. Moreover, Quatermain is tired of hunting, sick of the damage being done to his beloved Africa. So if you ask me, Haggard was well ahead of his time in many regards. 

The story leads to a tremendous battle scene, and boy oh boy does it look in my mind's eye like a classic Hollywood cast-of-thousands fight. And of course, there's a death-defying descent into the earth to find the treasures concealed within. 

I say, if you want a taste of old-fashioned thrills and chills, you can hardly do better than King Solomon's Mines, unless it's one of Haggard's other novels, like She or Ayesha. I read this Dover edition, but you can check it out for free thanks to Mongo and our other friends at Project Gutenberg. The book is foundational for the "Lost World" type of story, and set a blueprint for high adventure that persisted for a hundred years.