King Solomon's Mines

Last summer I came across a three-book-in-one compendium of 19th-century adventure writer H. Rider Haggard’s “lost worlds” stories. I read She right off the bat and was pleasantly surprised with a fast, immensely captivating read. I know that sounds goofy, but it’s the truth. I just finished the second novel, King Solomon’s Mines, and I am of the same opinion: page-turning and enchanting.

Which is surprising, because though I am a science fiction buff, I never really was a “Lost World” buff. These types of novels throw a bunch of Victorian adventurers and/or scientists (usually the men are a composite of both) into a foreign country and to some fabled land never-before traversed by the White Man. Some devolve into mildly amusing travelogues, others into a generic dinosaur-and-caveman hunts. Whatever the case, they all have their genesis in the works of H. Rider Haggard. King Solomon’s Mines is the first Lost World novel, written in a couple of weeks on a dare.

It begins with a chance meeting: Sir Henry and his faithful friend Captain Good, on a quest to find the former’s lost brother, with Allan Quartermain, world-weary hunter and adventurer and possessor of a strange map. It’s soon determined that this map indeed seems to describe the very path taken by Sir Henry’s sibling two years prior. The map describes a northward journey through south central Africa, through an impassable desert some eighty leagues wide to an ancient road. The road leads through a unique mountain formation, and what lies beyond – perhaps the famed diamond mines of old King Solomon!

We’re led by the hand through some very tense scenes. The heat of thirst in the desert, and the growling of a shriveled stomach when there’s literally no thing around to eat, we vicariously experience with gritty realism. But we know our heroes won’t succumb to such a mundane demise – no, their 19th century wills simply won’t allow that. They push through, and encounter the Kukuanas – an African tribe that are to the Zulus what the Green Berets are to the Berkeley Student Union of Conscientious Objectors.

More tension ensues. The Kukuanas are led by a vicious tyrant, name of Twyla, with an ageless, gnarled witch, name of Gagoul, at his side. At the monthly full moon the witch hunts are held – and we participate, against our will, with Allan, Sir Henry, and Good. Gagoul’s “children” sniff out the Kukuanas and hapless victims are plucked out, seemingly at random, for instant death by spear and club.

But it is not a grim novel. It’s an optimistic one. There’s that relaxed, confident prose of the Victorian storyteller. The voice of a man who could do anything he set his mind to – and verily expected nothing less of himself. King Solomon’s Mines is wordy without being boring, humanly humorous, and downright optimistic.

Humorous, you say? Yes, very. Particularly in the character of Captain Good. Haggard is good enough a writer (pun intended) to not simply allow the Captain to be a comedic foil; our good man does become an unlikely candidate for romance late in the novel. (Though I have to say Good is better for a laugh than as a convincing romeo.) Upon first encountering the stern, dangerous Kukuanas, Quartermain convinces them that he and his compatriots are lords from the stars. The deciding factor is Captain Good: caught without his pants and with one side of his beard shaved off, and combined with his monocle and removable spare teeth, he has the same effect on the African warriors as C3PO did with the Ewoks. Poor Good is forced to spend the remainder of the novel with half a beard and pantless, for his “beautiful white legs” simply mesmerize the Kukuana warriors.

Thrown in with the tension and the comedic relief are some scenes I won’t soon forget. There’s the quick but gruesome death of a caravan boy by an enraged elephant, and the bone-crunching comeuppance to the witch Gagoul.

Though I don’t think such a novel can be written today, I don’t think it a racist novel. Some modernists may or may not have portrayed it as such; I haven’t bothered to confirm this but I can imagine it in my mind. I disagree. The Kukuanas are, ultimately, a noble race, despite the yoke of savagery foisted upon them. Rider describes them, I believe, with a benign accuracy that is acceptable to us “enlightened” 21st century readers.

I was surprised at how prolific Haggard was over a career that spanned something like forty years. Dozens and dozens of books, some sequels, most some permutation of the Lost World theme. The third and last book in my omnibus is Allan Quartermain, of which I have no idea what it’s about. I plan on reading it next summer. I give King Solomon’s Mines a B +; I liked it but I still liked She a little bit better. So I’m curious to see how this whole thing pans out. The H. Rider Haggard compendium goes back on the bookshelf.