Five-minute digest
King Solomon's Mines
Summary
King Solomon's Mines is told by Allan Quatermain, an elephant hunter of Durban in Natal, who writes the story for his son Harry, a medical student in London. On a ship from Cape Town he meets Sir Henry Curtis, a huge, fair-bearded English baronet, and his friend Captain John Good, a retired naval officer with an eyeglass and false teeth. Sir Henry is searching for his younger brother George, who quarreled with him, took the name Neville, and went north two years before in search of the fabled mines of King Solomon. Quatermain owns an old map drawn in blood on linen by the Portuguese José da Silvestra in 1590, and he agrees to guide the search for a share of any treasure and provision for Harry if he dies. They engage servants, among them a tall, dignified man called Umbopa who asks to join without pay. After an elephant hunt in which the servant Khiva is killed saving Good, the party crosses a waterless desert, nearly dies of thirst, finds a hidden spring, and climbs the snowy peaks called Sheba's Breasts, where the Hottentot Ventvögel dies of cold in a cave beside the frozen body of da Silvestra himself. Beyond lies Kukuanaland and Solomon's great road. Taken for white men from the stars because of Good's removable teeth and half-shaven face, they are brought before the one-eyed king Twala, who rules with the help of the ancient witch-finder Gagool. After a witch-hunt in which many are killed, Umbopa reveals that he is Ignosi, son of the murdered king Imotu, and shows the sacred snake tattooed round his waist. Using an almanac, the travelers predict an eclipse of the moon to stop the sacrifice of the girl Foulata and to win the support of chiefs led by Ignosi's uncle Infadoos. In the battle that follows, the veteran Greys regiment makes a heroic last stand, and Sir Henry kills Twala in single combat. Good, wounded, recovers from fever through Foulata's nursing. Gagool leads the three men past the colossal Silent Ones and the petrified kings in the Place of Death into Solomon's treasure chamber; there she stabs Foulata and is crushed by the closing stone door, trapping the men among the diamonds until they find a passage out. Ignosi, now king, lets them go and vows to close his land to outsiders. Returning by another route, they find George Curtis lamed at an oasis and bring him home. Cassell published the novel in September 1885; the library text follows a 1907 Cassell edition.
Top Lessons
A journey undertaken for love
Sir Henry does not seek diamonds but the brother he quarreled with. He tells Umbopa that no mountain or desert stops a man whose love leads him and who counts his life as nothing. The whole expedition, with its thirst, cold and battle, becomes the measure of that resolve, and it ends with a reconciliation at a desert oasis.
The rightful king
Umbopa's revelation as Ignosi turns the treasure hunt into a story of a usurper overthrown. Haggard gives Ignosi the dignity of a returning heir: he proves his birth by the sacred snake, wins chiefs by reason and sign, and promises justice by trial. His farewell also states his own purpose for his people in strong terms.
Treasure and its worth
The heroes reach a chamber holding more wealth than they can carry and immediately find it useless, sealed in the dark without food or water. Haggard gives Quatermain the reflection that wealth is valueless at the last, and gives Ignosi the reproach that his friends love the stones more than him.
Courage in many forms
Khiva's sacrifice, the last stand of the Greys, Foulata's nursing and Quatermain's step between the girl and Scragga's spear all show different kinds of courage. Quatermain himself, who keeps insisting he is a cautious man, shows that courage can coexist with fear.
Verified Quotes
“At any rate, I can safely say that there is not a _petticoat_ in the whole history.”
“there is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it.”
“Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere.”
“no man’s blood should be shed without trial, and that witch-hunting should cease in the land.”
“Truly wealth, which men spend their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.”
“No other white man shall cross the mountains, even if any man live to come so far. I will see no traders with their guns and gin. My people shall fight with the spear, and drink water, like their forefathers before them.”
Medical Lens
The novel is a useful record of how a late-Victorian adventure writer imagined field medicine. After the battle Captain Good, described as a very decent amateur surgeon, cleans and stitches Sir Henry's jaw wound and his own leg wound by lamplight and smears them with antiseptic ointment, a detail that shows how quickly antiseptic practice of the Lister era had entered the general reader's picture of good surgery. Good nonetheless develops a high wound fever with delirium and coughs blood, which Quatermain attributes to an internal injury, and his crisis passes on the fifth night under Foulata's constant nursing; she gives him a cooling drink of milk and bulb juice, and keeps flies away, while by the king's order the huts around are emptied so that no noise reaches the sick man. Quatermain is himself narrating for his son Harry, who is training at a London hospital, and the frame lets him speak as a layman reporting to a future doctor. The desert chapters describe extreme thirst and heat, the mountain chapters death from cold, and the treasure-chamber chapters the fear of slow death by hunger and darkness. Gagool's great age and shriveled appearance are presented as uncanny rather than clinical.
- Chapter VI, Water! Water!
The party, out of water in the desert heat, nearly collapses before finding a spring at the hill.
- Chapter VII, Solomon's Road
Ventvögel dies of cold in the mountain cave; the travelers find the frozen, preserved body of José da Silvestra.
- Chapter XV, Good Falls Sick
Good stitches the wounds and applies antiseptic ointment; his fever, delirium and blood-spitting follow, and Foulata nurses him through the crisis.
- Chapter XVIII, We Abandon Hope
Trapped in the treasure chamber with little food and water, the men count their matches and anticipate death from hunger and thirst.