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Some years since--it was during the winter before the Zulu War--a White
Man was travelling through Natal. His name does not matter, for he plays
no part in this story. With him were two wagons laden with goods, which
he was transporting to Pretoria. The weather was cold and there was
little or no grass for the oxen, which made the journey difficult; but
he had been tempted to it by the high rates of transport that prevailed
at that season of the year, which would remunerate him for any probable
loss he might suffer in cattle. So he pushed along on his journey, and
all went well until he had passed the little town of Stanger, once the
site of Duguza, the kraal of Chaka, the first Zulu king and the uncle of
Cetywayo. The night after he left Stanger the air turned bitterly cold,
heavy grey clouds filled the sky, and hid the light of the stars.

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SCRIBE ANA COMES TO TANIS

This is the story of me, Ana the scribe, son of Meri, and of certain of
the days that I have spent upon the earth. These things I have written
down now that I am very old in the reign of Rameses, the third of that
name, when Egypt is once more strong and as she was in the ancient time.
I have written them before death takes me, that they may be buried with
me in death, for as my spirit shall arise in the hour of resurrection,
so also these my words may arise in their hour and tell to those who
shall come after me upon the earth of what I knew upon the earth. Let it
be as Those in heaven shall decree. At least I write and what I write is
true.


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THE PLOT OF ABI

It was evening in Egypt, thousands of years ago, when the Prince Abi,
governor of Memphis and of great territories in the Delta, made fast his
ship of state to a quay beneath the outermost walls of the mighty city
of Uast or Thebes, which we moderns know as Luxor and Karnac on the
Nile. Abi, a large man, very dark of skin, for his mother was one of the
hated Hyksos barbarians who once had usurped the throne of Egypt, sat
upon the deck of his ship and stared at the setting sun which for a few
moments seemed to rest, a round ball of fire, upon the bare and rugged
mountains, that ring round the Tombs of the Kings.
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WHAT IS THE SALVATION ARMY?

If this question were put to the ordinary person of fashion or
leisure, how would it be answered?

In many cases thus: 'The Salvation Army is a body of people dressed up
in a semi-military uniform, or those of them who are women, in
unbecoming poke bonnets, who go about the streets making a noise in
the name of God and frightening horses with brass bands. It is under
the rule of an arbitrary old gentleman named Booth, who calls himself
a General, and whose principal trade assets consist in a handsome and
unusual face, and an inexhaustible flow of language, which he
generally delivers from a white motor-car wherever he finds that he
can attract the most attention. He is a clever actor in his way, who
has got a great number of people under his thumb, and I am told that
he has made a large fortune out of the business, like the late prophet
Dowie, and others of the same sort. The newspapers are always exposing
him; but he knows which side his bread is buttered and does not care.
When he is gone no doubt his family will divide up the cash, and we
shall hear no more of the Salvation Army!'
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lakes, on which plain stood mounds that I connected with the dead. What the dead were I did not quite understand, but I gathered that they were people who, having once walked about and been awake, now laid themselves down in a bed of earth and slept. I remember looking at a big mound which was said to cover a chief known as "The Wanderer," whom Freydisa, the wise woman, my nurse, told me had lived hundreds or thousands of years before, and thinking that so much earth over him must make him very hot at nights. I remember also that the hall called Aar was a long house roofed with sods, on which grew grass and sometimes little white flowers, and that inside of it cows were tied up. We lived in a place beyond, that was separated off from the cows by balks of rough timber. I used to watch them being milked through a crack between two of the balks where a knot had fallen out, leaving a convenient eyehole about the height of a walking-stick from the floor. ... Read more

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THE DEPUTATION

Has the age of miracle quite gone by, or is it still possible to the
Voice of Faith calling aloud upon the earth to wring from the dumb
heavens an audible answer to its prayer? Does the promise uttered by the
Master of mankind upon the eve of the end--"Whoso that believeth in Me,
the works that I do he shall do also . . . and whatsoever ye shall ask
in My name, that will I do;"--still hold good to such as do ask and do
believe?

Let those who care to study the history of the Rev. Thomas Owen, and
of that strange man who carried on and completed his work, answer this
question according to their judgment.
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My friend, into whose hands I hope that all these manuscripts of mine
will pass one day, of this one I have something to say to you.

A long while ago I jotted down in it the history of the events that
it details with more or less completeness. This I did for my own
satisfaction. You will have noted how memory fails us as we advance
in years; we recollect, with an almost painful exactitude, what we
experienced and saw in our youth, but the happenings of our middle
life slip away from us or become blurred, like a stretch of low-lying
landscape overflowed by grey and nebulous mist. Far off the sun still
seems to shine upon the plains and hills of adolescence and early
manhood, as yet it shines about us in the fleeting hours of our age,
that ground on which we stand to-day, but the valley between is filled
with fog. Yes, even its prominences, which symbolise the more startling
events of that past, often are lost in this confusing fog.
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THE SINS OF THE FATHER ARE VISITED ON THE CHILDREN

The January afternoon was passing into night, the air was cold and
still, so still that not a single twig of the naked beech-trees stirred;
on the grass of the meadows lay a thin white rime, half frost, half
snow; the firs stood out blackly against a steel-hued sky, and over the
tallest of them hung a single star. Past these bordering firs there ran
a road, on which, in this evening of the opening of our story, a young
man stood irresolute, glancing now to the right and now to the left.
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H. Rider Haggard's 33rd work of fiction out of an eventual 58, "The Yellow God" was first published in the U.S. in November 1908, and in Britain several months later. In this one, Haggard deals with one of his favorite subjects--African adventure--but puts a fresh spin on things. Thus, instead of Natal, Zululand, the Transvaal and Egypt, where the bulk of his African tales take place, "The Yellow God" transpires, for the most part, in what I gather is now northern Nigeria. And instead of big-game hunter Allan Quatermain (the protagonist of no less than 14 Haggard novels), here we are given Alan Vernon, an ex-Army colonel who, with his steadfast servant Jeekie, goes on a quest to find the legendary gold hordes of the undiscovered Asiki people. And, after braving a harrowing trek during which they encounter poison-arrow-shooting dwarves, good-hearted cannibals, fierce beasts, raging rivers, swamps and a monster storm, the lost people of Asikiland are indeed discovered, and Haggard treats us to yet another mysterious civilization, as well as its imposing ruler. In this case, it is the beautiful but wicked woman named the Asika, who I suppose some readers would deem a poor man's Ayesha of "She" fame, but who is quite an interesting character in her own right. As did Ayesha herself, the Asika takes a hot-blooded fancy to her white visitor, who she sees as a returned soul mate, and decides to keep him and Jeekie around...in perpetuity.
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THE PRISON AT CAESAREA

It was but two hours after midnight, yet many were wakeful in Caesarea on
the Syrian coast. Herod Agrippa, King of all Palestine--by grace of
the Romans--now at the very apex of his power, celebrated a festival in
honour of the Emperor Claudius, to which had flocked all the mightiest
in the land and tens of thousands of the people. The city was full of
them, their camps were set upon the sea-beach and for miles around;
there was no room at the inns or in the private houses, where guests
slept upon the roofs, the couches, the floors, and in the gardens. The
great town hummed like a hive of bees disturbed after sunset, and though
the louder sounds of revelling had died away, parties of feasters,
many of them still crowned with fading roses, passed along the
streets shouting and singing to their lodgings. As they went, they
discussed--those of them who were sufficiently sober--the incidents of
that day's games in the great circus, and offered or accepted odds upon
the more exciting events of the morrow.
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MURGH THE DEATH

They knew nothing of it in England or all the Western countries in those
days before Crecy was fought, when the third Edward sat upon the throne.
There was none to tell them of the doom that the East, whence come light
and life, death and the decrees of God, had loosed upon the world. Not
one in a multitude in Europe had ever even heard of those vast lands of
far Cathay peopled with hundreds of millions of cold-faced yellow
men, lands which had grown very old before our own familiar states and
empires were carved out of mountain, of forest, and of savage-haunted
plain. Yet if their eyes had been open so that they could see, well
might they have trembled. King, prince, priest, merchant, captain,
citizen and poor labouring hind, well might they all have trembled when
the East sent forth her gifts!
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MORRIS, MARY, AND THE AEROPHONE

Above, the sky seemed one vast arc of solemn blue, set here and there
with points of tremulous fire; below, to the shadowy horizon, stretched
the plain of the soft grey sea, while from the fragrances of night and
earth floated a breath of sleep and flowers.

A man leaned on the low wall that bordered the cliff edge, and looked
at sea beneath and sky above. Then he contemplated the horizon, and
murmured some line heard or learnt in childhood, ending "where earth and
heaven meet."
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I suppose that I, Humphrey Arbuthnot, should begin this history in
which Destiny has caused me to play so prominent a part, with some short
account of myself and of my circumstances.

I was born forty years ago in this very Devonshire village in which I
write, but not in the same house. Now I live in the Priory, an ancient
place and a fine one in its way, with its panelled rooms, its beautiful
gardens where, in this mild climate, in addition to our own, flourish
so many plants which one would only expect to find in countries that
lie nearer to the sun, and its green, undulating park studded with great
timber trees. The view, too, is perfect; behind and around the rich
Devonshire landscape with its hills and valleys and its scarped faces
of red sandstone, and at a distance in front, the sea. There are little
towns quite near too, that live for the most part on visitors, but these
are so hidden away by the contours of the ground that from the Priory
one cannot see them. Such is Fulcombe where I live, though for obvious
reasons I do not give it its real name.
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There are some who find great interest, and even consolation, amid the
worries and anxieties of life in the collection of relics of the past,
drift or long-sunk treasures that the sea of time has washed up upon our
modern shore.

The great collectors are not of this class. Having large sums at their
disposal, these acquire any rarity that comes upon the market and add
it to their store which in due course, perhaps immediately upon their
deaths, also will be put upon the market and pass to the possession of
other connoisseurs. Nor are the dealers who buy to sell again and thus
grow wealthy. Nor are the agents of museums in many lands, who purchase
for the national benefit things that are gathered together in certain
great public buildings which perhaps, some day, though the thought
makes one shiver, will be looted or given to the flames by enemies or by
furious, thieving mobs.
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WHY THOMAS WINGFIELD TELLS HIS TALE


Now glory be to God who has given us the victory! It is true, the
strength of Spain is shattered, her ships are sunk or fled, the sea has
swallowed her soldiers and her sailors by hundreds and by thousands, and
England breathes again. They came to conquer, to bring us to the torture
and the stake--to do to us free Englishmen as Cortes did by the Indians
of Anahuac. Our manhood to the slave bench, our daughters to dishonour,
our souls to the loving-kindness of the priest, our wealth to the
Emperor and the Pope! God has answered them with his winds, Drake has
answered them with his guns. They are gone, and with them the glory of
Spain.
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INTRODUCTION

In giving to the world the record of what, looked at as an adventure
only, is I suppose one of the most wonderful and mysterious experiences
ever undergone by mortal men, I feel it incumbent on me to explain what
my exact connection with it is. And so I may as well say at once that I
am not the narrator but only the editor of this extraordinary history,
and then go on to tell how it found its way into my hands.

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