King Solomon's Mines
Never shall I forget the sight afforded by those three towering peaks
in the early sunlight of the following morning. High, high above us, up
into the blue air, soared their twisted snow-wreaths. Beneath the
snow-line the peaks were purple with heaths, and so were the wild moors
that ran up the slopes towards them. Straight before us the white
ribbon of Solomon’s Great Road stretched away uphill to the foot of the
centre peak, about five miles from us, and there stopped. It was its
terminus.
I had better leave the feelings of intense excitement with which we set
out on our march that morning to the imagination of those who read this
history. At last we were drawing near to the wonderful mines that had
been the cause of the miserable death of the old Portuguese Dom three
centuries ago, of my poor friend, his ill-starred descendant, and also,
as we feared, of George Curtis, Sir Henry’s brother. Were we destined,
after all that we had gone through, to fare any better? Evil befell
them, as that old fiend Gagool said; would it also befall us? Somehow,
as we were marching up that last stretch of beautiful road, I could not
help feeling a little superstitious about the matter, and so I think
did Good and Sir Henry.
For an hour and a half or more we tramped on up the heather-fringed
way, going so fast in our excitement that the bearers of Gagool’s
hammock could scarcely keep pace with us, and its occupant piped out to
us to stop.
“Walk more slowly, white men,” she said, projecting her hideous
shrivelled countenance between the grass curtains, and fixing her
gleaming eyes upon us; “why will ye run to meet the evil that shall
befall you, ye seekers after treasure?” and she laughed that horrible
laugh which always sent a cold shiver down my back, and for a while
quite took the enthusiasm out of us.
However, on we went, till we saw before us, and between ourselves and
the peak, a vast circular hole with sloping sides, three hundred feet
or more in depth, and quite half a mile round.
“Can’t you guess what this is?” I said to Sir Henry and Good, who were
staring in astonishment at the awful pit before us.
They shook their heads.
“Then it is clear that you have never seen the diamond diggings at
Kimberley. You may depend on it that this is Solomon’s Diamond Mine.
Look there,” I said, pointing to the strata of stiff blue clay which
were yet to be seen among the grass and bushes that clothed the sides
of the pit, “the formation is the same. I’ll be bound that if we went
down there we should find ‘pipes’ of soapy brecciated rock. Look, too,”
and I pointed to a series of worn flat slabs of stone that were placed
on a gentle slope below the level of a watercourse which in some past
age had been cut out of the solid rock; “if those are not tables once
used to wash the ‘stuff,’ I’m a Dutchman.”
At the edge of this vast hole, which was none other than the pit marked
on the old Dom’s map, the Great Road branched into two and circumvented
it. In many places, by the way, this surrounding road was built
entirely out of blocks of stone, apparently with the object of
supporting the edges of the pit and preventing falls of reef. Along
this path we pressed, driven by curiosity to see what were the three
towering objects which we could discern from the hither side of the
great gulf. As we drew near we perceived that they were Colossi of some
sort or another, and rightly conjectured that before us sat the three
“Silent Ones” that are held in such awe by the Kukuana people. But it
was not until we were quite close to them that we recognised the full
majesty of these “Silent Ones.”
There, upon huge pedestals of dark rock, sculptured with rude emblems
of the Phallic worship, separated from each other by a distance of
forty paces, and looking down the road which crossed some sixty miles
of plain to Loo, were three colossal seated forms—two male and one
female—each measuring about thirty feet from the crown of its head to
the pedestal.
The female form, which was nude, was of great though severe beauty, but
unfortunately the features had been injured by centuries of exposure to
the weather. Rising from either side of her head were the points of a
crescent. The two male Colossi, on the contrary, were draped, and
presented a terrifying cast of features, especially the one to our
right, which had the face of a devil. That to our left was serene in
countenance, but the calm upon it seemed dreadful. It was the calm of
that inhuman cruelty, Sir Henry remarked, which the ancients attributed
to beings potent for good, who could yet watch the sufferings of
humanity, if not without rejoicing, at least without sorrow. These
three statues form a most awe-inspiring trinity, as they sit there in
their solitude, and gaze out across the plain for ever.
Contemplating these “Silent Ones,” as the Kukuanas call them, an
intense curiosity again seized us to know whose were the hands which
had shaped them, who it was that had dug the pit and made the road.
Whilst I was gazing and wondering, suddenly it occurred to me—being
familiar with the Old Testament—that Solomon went astray after strange
gods, the names of three of whom I remembered—“Ashtoreth, the goddess
of the Zidonians, Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, and Milcom, the god
of the children of Ammon”—and I suggested to my companions that the
figures before us might represent these false and exploded divinities.
“Hum,” said Sir Henry, who is a scholar, having taken a high degree in
classics at college, “there may be something in that; Ashtoreth of the
Hebrews was the Astarte of the Phoenicians, who were the great traders
of Solomon’s time. Astarte, who afterwards became the Aphrodite of the
Greeks, was represented with horns like the half-moon, and there on the
brow of the female figure are distinct horns. Perhaps these Colossi
were designed by some Phoenician official who managed the mines. Who
can say?”[10]
[10] Compare Milton, “Paradise Lost,” Book i.:—
“With these in troop
Came Ashtoreth, whom the Phoenicians called
Astarté, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horns;
To whose bright image nightly by the moon
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs.”
Before we had finished examining these extraordinary relics of remote
antiquity, Infadoos came up, and having saluted the “Silent Ones” by
lifting his spear, asked us if we intended entering the “Place of
Death” at once, or if we would wait till after we had taken food at
mid-day. If we were ready to go at once, Gagool had announced her
willingness to guide us. As it was not later than eleven o’clock—driven
to it by a burning curiosity—we announced our intention of proceeding
instantly, and I suggested that, in case we should be detained in the
cave, we should take some food with us. Accordingly Gagool’s litter was
brought up, and that lady herself assisted out of it. Meanwhile
Foulata, at my request, stored some “biltong,” or dried game-flesh,
together with a couple of gourds of water, in a reed basket with a
hinged cover. Straight in front of us, at a distance of some fifty
paces from the backs of the Colossi, rose a sheer wall of rock, eighty
feet or more in height, that gradually sloped upwards till it formed
the base of the lofty snow-wreathed peak, which soared into the air
three thousand feet above us. As soon as she was clear of her hammock,
Gagool cast one evil grin upon us, and then, leaning on a stick,
hobbled off towards the face of this wall. We followed her till we came
to a narrow portal solidly arched that looked like the opening of a
gallery of a mine.
Here Gagool was waiting for us, still with that evil grin upon her
horrid face.
“Now, white men from the Stars,” she piped; “great warriors, Incubu,
Bougwan, and Macumazahn the wise, are ye ready? Behold, I am here to do
the bidding of my lord the king, and to show you the store of bright
stones. _Ha! ha! ha!_”
“We are ready,” I said.
“Good, good! Make strong your hearts to bear what ye shall see. Comest
thou too, Infadoos, thou who didst betray thy master?”
Infadoos frowned as he answered—
“Nay, I come not; it is not for me to enter there. But thou, Gagool,
curb thy tongue, and beware how thou dealest with my lords. At thy
hands will I require them, and if a hair of them be hurt, Gagool, be’st
thou fifty times a witch, thou shalt die. Hearest thou?”
“I hear, Infadoos; I know thee, thou didst ever love big words; when
thou wast a babe I remember thou didst threaten thine own mother. That
was but the other day. But, fear not, fear not, I live only to do the
bidding of the king. I have done the bidding of many kings, Infadoos,
till in the end they did mine. _Ha! ha!_ I go to look upon their faces
once more, and Twala’s also! Come on, come on, here is the lamp,” and
she drew a large gourd full of oil, and fitted with a rush wick, from
under her fur cloak.
“Art thou coming, Foulata?” asked Good in his villainous Kitchen
Kukuana, in which he had been improving himself under that young lady’s
tuition.
“I fear, my lord,” the girl answered timidly.
“Then give me the basket.”
“Nay, my lord, whither thou goest there I go also.”
“The deuce you will!” thought I to myself; “that may be rather awkward
if we ever get out of this.”
Without further ado Gagool plunged into the passage, which was wide
enough to admit of two walking abreast, and quite dark. We followed the
sound of her voice as she piped to us to come on, in some fear and
trembling, which was not allayed by the flutter of a sudden rush of
wings.
“Hullo! what’s that?” halloed Good; “somebody hit me in the face.”
“Bats,” said I; “on you go.”
When, so far as we could judge, we had gone some fifty paces, we
perceived that the passage was growing faintly light. Another minute,
and we were in perhaps the most wonderful place that the eyes of living
man have beheld.
Let the reader picture to himself the hall of the vastest cathedral he
ever stood in, windowless indeed, but dimly lighted from above,
presumably by shafts connected with the outer air and driven in the
roof, which arched away a hundred feet above our heads, and he will get
some idea of the size of the enormous cave in which we found ourselves,
with the difference that this cathedral designed by nature was loftier
and wider than any built by man. But its stupendous size was the least
of the wonders of the place, for running in rows adown its length were
gigantic pillars of what looked like ice, but were, in reality, huge
stalactites. It is impossible for me to convey any idea of the
overpowering beauty and grandeur of these pillars of white spar, some
of which were not less than twenty feet in diameter at the base, and
sprang up in lofty and yet delicate beauty sheer to the distant roof.
Others again were in process of formation. On the rock floor there was
in these cases what looked, Sir Henry said, exactly like a broken
column in an old Grecian temple, whilst high above, depending from the
roof, the point of a huge icicle could be dimly seen.
Even as we gazed we could hear the process going on, for presently with
a tiny splash a drop of water would fall from the far-off icicle on to
the column below. On some columns the drops only fell once in two or
three minutes, and in these cases it would be an interesting
calculation to discover how long, at that rate of dripping, it would
take to form a pillar, say eighty feet by ten in diameter. That the
process, in at least one instance, was incalculably slow, the following
example will suffice to show. Cut on one of these pillars we discovered
the crude likeness of a mummy, by the head of which sat what appeared
to be the figure of an Egyptian god, doubtless the handiwork of some