King Solomon’s Mines

king solomon's mines

BY SIR HENRY RIDER HAGGARD

Biographical facts

Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925). Public servant, reformer, commissioner, agriculturist and well-known story teller, Rider Haggard was the author of thirty-four adventure novels of which King Solomon's Mines, She and Allan Quatermain are now best remembered.

Henry Rider Haggard was born in Bradenham in Norfolk in 1856. He was the sixth son of a lawyer and was educated in Ipswich. In 1875 his father procured for him the post of junior secretary to the Governor of Natal, Sir Henry Bulwer. He set sail for South Africa and spent six years there, fascinated by its landscape, wildlife, tribal society and mysterious past. He returned to England in 1880 and was called to the Bar to Lincoln's Inn four years later. His first and perhaps most celebrated novel, King Solomon's Mines, is set in Africa and was published soon after he had qualified in 1885. It was so successful that Haggard was able to move back to Norfolk, where he could concentrate on his writing. He produced a whole series of spellbinding and extravagant romances set in far-flung corners of the world: Iceland, Constantinople, Mexico, Ancient Egypt and, of course, Africa. Both She and Allan Quatermain were published in 1887, and by 1890, at the age of thirty-four, Haggard had become both mi enormously successful writer and a household name. He used his position well and did much to further causes, iccepting an honorary post and giving countless after-iinner speeches. He was great friends with fellow writer Rudyard Kipling and with the anthropologist and scholar Andrew Lang, to whom She is inscribed.

A private man, Haggard was deeply shattered by the ieath of his son in 1891, and for many months afterwards vas rarely to be seen outside his Norfolk home. After an msuccessful stand for Parliament in 1894 Haggard threw limself into his campaigning and writing once more. One ubject that he wrote about extensively was the state of .

British agriculture and his A Farmer's Year (1898) and Rural England (1902) made a substantial contribution to alleviating the plight of the farmer and small-holder of the time. Throughout his life Haggard continued to travel widely, visiting exotic places that helped fuel his imagination for new stories. He was knighted in 1912 and died in 1925.

Written in the same period as She, Allan Quatermain and Jess, King Solomon's Mines is one of Haggard's most exciting adventure stories. Its African setting is vividly described and shows his love for fascination with that continent.

I’d like to tell you some words about his best novel which I’ve read King Solomon’s Mines. It was written on a bet H. Rider claimed, and his brother doubted, that he could write a better and, more successful adventure story than Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”. Hence King Solomon’s Mines was written, published, and became a phenomenon in 1885. Born into the large family of a country gentleman, Haggard was a colonial administrator in South Africa during the Zulu Was of 1879 and the first Boer Was of 1880. He drew on his experience in Africa to write King Solomon’s Mines, a story, like “ Treasure Island”, of maps, buried treasure, villainy, and English pluck. In South Africa, Haggard developed an appreciation for African cultures and rituals.

The story runs Sir Henry Curtis, Captain John Good and Quatermain, accompanied by Umbopa, who was their servant, set off to reveal the fate of Curtis’s missing brother – he has gone to look for the treasure of King Solomon in the land of Kukuanas. Allan Quatermain has its own interest in the travel, he wanted to find diamonds, he wished to become rich and to help his son to graduate from the University.

On their way they run across different obstacles. Can you imagine they are in a dessert, where sun is very burning; their supply of water ahd food came to the end, but food isn’t a very great problem. They are hunters and they kill different animals: anthelops, elephants and different snakes. Water is really great problem, they haven’t drunt a drop for a day, they are dying and they realize that water is the greatest treasure and now their only ame is to stay alive but fortunately they found a pl full of water mellons. They were just crazy and began to eat them i they seemed to them very sweet. When they assuaged their thirst they began to think about money again. So I can say than people never change, their main thing in life is money, money and money and they even are ready to die for money, though they are not always ready to die for their friends or love. The author says: “Well, it is not a good world – nobody can say that it is, save those who wilfully blind themselves to facts. How can a world be good in which. Money is the moving power, and self-interested the star? The wonder is not that it is so bad, but that there should be any good left in it”.

At first three seeker of adventures were accompanied by three servants but two of them paid their lives for money: one of them was killed by an elephant and the other froze in the cave when they came to another latitude of the dessert.

They were lucky to have a map of a dessert which helped them to find the way. It was given by Jose de Silvestra who died of hunger in the little cave but he have seen the countless diamonds stores in Solomon’s treasure chamber behind the white Death.

Once they found a stream, they were very happy but the next adventure was waiting for them. The main heroes met with a native trade of black people who wanted to kill them. As I have already said they were barn under lucky star and they got out of this problem. So Captain Good had false teeth I when he bowed he allowed them to fly out and back to his jaw with a snap; Sir Allan managed to kill a little klipspringer antelope standing about seventy yards away by his rifle. In a result crowd of Kukuanas was frightened I asked them Allan answered that they came from the biggest star that shines and their mission is to bless them by their soujorn I the leader of the tribe proposed them to visit their king. When came the King have already died and black people thought it was a sign and they crowned Umbopa their King (Umbopa-servant of Captain Good and Allan Quatermain). So this travel brought happy to Umbopa, before it, he was a black servant and became a King.

Umbopa left in a village and two men continued their travel. The road was very hard for them and full of dangeour but they riched their destination.

The adventures find Solomon’s Mines but they are left to die in an underground vault by Gagool,

the horrific with – doctor. After an escape they find Captain’s brother and return to the civilization.

This book celebrate the virtues of honour courage. It shows us that everything has a good end. It let us to dream and to feel ourselves closer to the Nature, to Join it.

It remains that if we have dreams we can mate it true but it all depends on us… We must not be afraid any obstacles and never give up.

It teach us to be impartial to other nations, other people, not to be selfish.

After reading such books you become kinder and more fair I advise you to read this book.