"KING SOLOMON'S MINES."

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 178, 30 July 1907, Page 3

"KING SOLOMON'S MINES."

Rider Haggard "writes in Cassell's on the " Real King" Solomon's Mines," and gives the sympathetic account one would expect from him of the mysterious goldseeking races, Phoenicians or Hiniyarites, in Ancient Africa. But savants of the strictly scientific type might do as much as this. What more tpecially interests us is the portion of the article dealing with Rider Haggard's vague guesses, at the time hia " King Solomon's Mines" was written, concerning things which, during the twenty-two years. since have been proved substantial facts. . As a lad and a public servant in Africa, he had gained from settlers and explorers the belief that there had tjeen an occupation by an ancient people. " How I came to conclude that this people was Phoenician I have now no idea, for I do not believe that anyone suggested this to me; Nor, to the best of my inemoiy, did I ever hear of the great ruin of Zimbabwe, or that, the ancients had carried on a vast goldmining enterpriso in the p*rt of Africa where it stands." When, the novelist's imagination constructed his " Solombn's Road," he was not to know that in time to come the old-world " Eoad of God " was actually to be discovered in the Matoppos. " W hen I imagined * Sheba's Breasts,' I was ignorant that so named and shaped they stand—vide the latest maps —not far from the Tokwe River, guarding the gate to the Great Zimbabwe, near which, in truth, or so I be-" lieve, Solomon or other ancient kings had the mines that poured the gold of Ophir into their coffers. *' The fact that diamonds existed elsewhere than at K:.mberley was discovered only within the last few years, yet even they have justified their introduction into the novel, ventured upon simply because they were more picturesque and easier to handle tban gold. And how came Eider Haggard to dream that hidden treasury with a sliding door of stone, which lato exploration was to find in actual fact amongst relics of the past ? He presumes it can only be the fruit of imagination, aided perhaps by chance words that lay dormant in the mind; "of that imagination which in some occult way so often seems to throw a shadow of the truth." Without this new occult. interest, however, " King Solomon's Mines " has had a success never anticipated by its author during the period when publishers scorned what has proven a remarkably sound investment in the way ef fiction. After two-and-twenty years, it can boast a large and hardly varying annual sale. Scientific circles may not yet recommend the book as scientific monograph upon the ancient Zimbabwe; but it remains a bewildering joy to old ladies who buy underthe impression that it is a religions tale, and to readers young or old who know what a good* adventure book should be.