King Solomon's Mines
“Thank Heaven!” said Sir Henry; “that brute has saved our lives. What
is it, Quatermain?”
I rose and went to look at the antelope, for I was not certain. It was
about the size of a donkey, with large curved horns. I had never seen
one like it before; the species was new to me. It was brown in colour,
with faint red stripes, and grew a thick coat. I afterwards discovered
that the natives of that wonderful country call these bucks “_inco_.”
They are very rare, and only found at a great altitude where no other
game will live. This animal was fairly hit high up in the shoulder,
though whose bullet brought it down we could not, of course, discover.
I believe that Good, mindful of his marvellous shot at the giraffe,
secretly set it down to his own prowess, and we did not contradict him.
We had been so busy satisfying our hunger that hitherto we had not
found time to look about us. But now, having set Umbopa to cut off as
much of the best meat as we were likely to be able to carry, we began
to inspect our surroundings. The mist had cleared away, for it was
eight o’clock, and the sun had sucked it up, so we were able to take in
all the country before us at a glance. I know not how to describe the
glorious panorama which unfolded itself to our gaze. I have never seen
anything like it before, nor shall, I suppose, again.
Behind and over us towered Sheba’s snowy Breasts, and below, some five
thousand feet beneath where we stood, lay league on league of the most
lovely champaign country. Here were dense patches of lofty forest,
there a great river wound its silvery way. To the left stretched a vast
expanse of rich, undulating veld or grass land, whereon we could just
make out countless herds of game or cattle, at that distance we could
not tell which. This expanse appeared to be ringed in by a wall of
distant mountains. To the right the country was more or less
mountainous; that is, solitary hills stood up from its level, with
stretches of cultivated land between, amongst which we could see groups
of dome-shaped huts. The landscape lay before us as a map, wherein
rivers flashed like silver snakes, and Alp-like peaks crowned with
wildly twisted snow wreaths rose in grandeur, whilst over all was the
glad sunlight and the breath of Nature’s happy life.
Two curious things struck us as we gazed. First, that the country
before us must lie at least three thousand feet higher than the desert
we had crossed, and secondly, that all the rivers flowed from south to
north. As we had painful reason to know, there was no water upon the
southern side of the vast range on which we stood, but on the northern
face were many streams, most of which appeared to unite with the great
river we could see winding away farther than our eyes could follow.
We sat down for a while and gazed in silence at this wonderful view.
Presently Sir Henry spoke.
“Isn’t there something on the map about Solomon’s Great Road?” he said.
I nodded, for I was still gazing out over the far country.
“Well, look; there it is!” and he pointed a little to our right.
Good and I looked accordingly, and there, winding away towards the
plain, was what appeared to be a wide turnpike road. We had not seen it
at first because, on reaching the plain, it turned behind some broken
country. We did not say anything, at least, not much; we were beginning
to lose the sense of wonder. Somehow it did not seem particularly
unnatural that we should find a sort of Roman road in this strange
land. We accepted the fact, that was all.
“Well,” said Good, “it must be quite near us if we cut off to the
right. Hadn’t we better be making a start?”
This was sound advice, and so soon as we had washed our faces and hands
in the stream we acted on it. For a mile or more we made our way over
boulders and across patches of snow, till suddenly, on reaching the top
of the little rise, we found the road at our feet. It was a splendid
road cut out of the solid rock, at least fifty feet wide, and
apparently well kept; though the odd thing was that it seemed to begin
there. We walked down and stood on it, but one single hundred paces
behind us, in the direction of Sheba’s Breasts, it vanished, the entire
surface of the mountain being strewn with boulders interspersed with
patches of snow.
“What do you make of this, Quatermain?” asked Sir Henry.
I shook my head, I could make nothing of the thing.
“I have it!” said Good; “the road no doubt ran right over the range and
across the desert on the other side, but the sand there has covered it
up, and above us it has been obliterated by some volcanic eruption of
molten lava.”
This seemed a good suggestion; at any rate, we accepted it, and
proceeded down the mountain. It proved a very different business
travelling along down hill on that magnificent pathway with full
stomachs from what it was travelling uphill over the snow quite starved
and almost frozen. Indeed, had it not been for melancholy recollections
of poor Ventvögel’s sad fate, and of that grim cave where he kept
company with the old Dom, we should have felt positively cheerful,
notwithstanding the sense of unknown dangers before us. Every mile we
walked the atmosphere grew softer and balmier, and the country before
us shone with a yet more luminous beauty. As for the road itself, I
never saw such an engineering work, though Sir Henry said that the
great road over the St. Gothard in Switzerland is very similar. No
difficulty had been too great for the Old World engineer who laid it
out. At one place we came to a ravine three hundred feet broad and at
least a hundred feet deep. This vast gulf was actually filled in with
huge blocks of dressed stone, having arches pierced through them at the
bottom for a waterway, over which the road went on sublimely. At
another place it was cut in zigzags out of the side of a precipice five
hundred feet deep, and in a third it tunnelled through the base of an
intervening ridge, a space of thirty yards or more.
Here we noticed that the sides of the tunnel were covered with quaint
sculptures, mostly of mailed figures driving in chariots. One, which
was exceedingly beautiful, represented a whole battle scene with a
convoy of captives being marched off in the distance.
“Well,” said Sir Henry, after inspecting this ancient work of art, “it
is very well to call this Solomon’s Road, but my humble opinion is that
the Egyptians had been here before Solomon’s people ever set a foot on
it. If this isn’t Egyptian or Phoenician handiwork, I must say that it
is very like it.”
By midday we had advanced sufficiently down the mountain to search the
region where wood was to be met with. First we came to scattered bushes
which grew more and more frequent, till at last we found the road
winding through a vast grove of silver trees similar to those which are
to be seen on the slopes of Table Mountain at Cape Town. I had never
before met with them in all my wanderings, except at the Cape, and
their appearance here astonished me greatly.
“Ah!” said Good, surveying these shining-leaved trees with evident
enthusiasm, “here is lots of wood, let us stop and cook some dinner; I
have about digested that raw heart.”
Nobody objected to this, so leaving the road we made our way to a
stream which was babbling away not far off, and soon had a goodly fire
of dry boughs blazing. Cutting off some substantial hunks from the
flesh of the _inco_ which we had brought with us, we proceeded to toast
them on the end of sharp sticks, as one sees the Kafirs do, and ate
them with relish. After filling ourselves, we lit our pipes and gave
ourselves up to enjoyment that, compared with the hardships we had
recently undergone, seemed almost heavenly.
The brook, of which the banks were clothed with dense masses of a
gigantic species of maidenhair fern interspersed with feathery tufts of
wild asparagus, sung merrily at our side, the soft air murmured through
the leaves of the silver trees, doves cooed around, and bright-winged
birds flashed like living gems from bough to bough. It was a Paradise.
The magic of the place combined with an overwhelming sense of dangers
left behind, and of the promised land reached at last, seemed to charm
us into silence. Sir Henry and Umbopa sat conversing in a mixture of
broken English and Kitchen Zulu in a low voice, but earnestly enough,
and I lay, with my eyes half shut, upon that fragrant bed of fern and
watched them.
Presently I missed Good, and I looked to see what had become of him.
Soon I observed him sitting by the bank of the stream, in which he had
been bathing. He had nothing on but his flannel shirt, and his natural
habits of extreme neatness having reasserted themselves, he was
actively employed in making a most elaborate toilet. He had washed his
gutta-percha collar, had thoroughly shaken out his trousers, coat and
waistcoat, and was now folding them up neatly till he was ready to put
them on, shaking his head sadly as he scanned the numerous rents and
tears in them, which naturally had resulted from our frightful journey.
Then he took his boots, scrubbed them with a handful of fern, and
finally rubbed them over with a piece of fat, which he had carefully
saved from the _inco_ meat, till they looked, comparatively speaking,
respectable. Having inspected them judiciously through his eye-glass,
he put the boots on and began a fresh operation. From a little bag that
he carried he produced a pocket-comb in which was fixed a tiny
looking-glass, and in this he surveyed himself. Apparently he was not
satisfied, for he proceeded to do his hair with great care. Then came a
pause whilst he again contemplated the effect; still it was not
satisfactory. He felt his chin, on which the accumulated scrub of a ten
days’ beard was flourishing.
“Surely,” thought I, “he is not going to try to shave.” But so it was.
Taking the piece of fat with which he had greased his boots, Good
washed it thoroughly in the stream. Then diving again into the bag he
brought out a little pocket razor with a guard to it, such as are
bought by people who are afraid of cutting themselves, or by those
about to undertake a sea voyage. Then he rubbed his face and chin
vigorously with the fat and began. Evidently it proved a painful
process, for he groaned very much over it, and I was convulsed with
inward laughter as I watched him struggling with that stubbly beard. It
seemed so very odd that a man should take the trouble to shave himself
with a piece of fat in such a place and in our circumstances. At last
he succeeded in getting the hair off the right side of his face and
chin, when suddenly I, who was watching, became conscious of a flash of
light that passed just by his head.
Good sprang up with a profane exclamation (if it had not been a safety
razor he would certainly have cut his throat), and so did I, without
the exclamation, and this was what I saw. Standing not more than twenty
paces from where I was, and ten from Good, were a group of men. They
were very tall and copper-coloured, and some of them wore great plumes
of black feathers and short cloaks of leopard skins; this was all I
noticed at the moment. In front of them stood a youth of about
seventeen, his hand still raised and his body bent forward in the
attitude of a Grecian statue of a spear-thrower. Evidently the flash of
light had been caused by a weapon which he had hurled.
As I looked an old soldier-like man stepped forward out of the group,
and catching the youth by the arm said something to him. Then they
advanced upon us.
Sir Henry, Good, and Umbopa by this time had seized their rifles and
lifted them threateningly. The party of natives still came on. It
struck me that they could not know what rifles were, or they would not
have treated them with such contempt.