King Solomons Mines | Page 9

was it that you heard about my brother's journey at
Bamangwato?" asked Sir Henry, as I paused to fill my pipe before
replying to Captain Good.
"I heard this," I answered, "and I have never mentioned it to a soul till
to-day. I heard that he was starting for Solomon's Mines."
"Solomon's Mines?" ejaculated both my hearers at once. "Where are
they?"
"I don't know," I said; "I know where they are said to be. Once I saw
the peaks of the mountains that border them, but there were a hundred
and thirty miles of desert between me and them, and I am not aware
that any white man ever got across it save one. But perhaps the best
thing I can do is to tell you the legend of Solomon's Mines as I know it,
you passing your word not to reveal anything I tell you without my

permission. Do you agree to that? I have my reasons for asking."
Sir Henry nodded, and Captain Good replied, "Certainly, certainly."
"Well," I began, "as you may guess, generally speaking, elephant
hunters are a rough set of men, who do not trouble themselves with
much beyond the facts of life and the ways of Kafirs. But here and
there you meet a man who takes the trouble to collect traditions from
the natives, and tries to make out a little piece of the history of this dark
land. It was such a man as this who first told me the legend of
Solomon's Mines, now a matter of nearly thirty years ago. That was
when I was on my first elephant hunt in the Matalebe country. His
name was Evans, and he was killed the following year, poor fellow, by
a wounded buffalo, and lies buried near the Zambesi Falls. I was telling
Evans one night, I remember, of some wonderful workings I had found
whilst hunting koodoo and eland in what is now the Lydenburg district
of the Transvaal. I see they have come across these workings again
lately in prospecting for gold, but I knew of them years ago. There is a
great wide wagon road cut out of the solid rock, and leading to the
mouth of the working or gallery. Inside the mouth of this gallery are
stacks of gold quartz piled up ready for roasting, which shows that the
workers, whoever they were, must have left in a hurry. Also, about
twenty paces in, the gallery is built across, and a beautiful bit of
masonry it is.
"'Ay,' said Evans, 'but I will spin you a queerer yarn than that'; and he
went on to tell me how he had found in the far interior a ruined city,
which he believed to be the Ophir of the Bible, and, by the way, other
more learned men have said the same long since poor Evans's time. I
was, I remember, listening open-eared to all these wonders, for I was
young at the time, and this story of an ancient civilisation and of the
treasures which those old Jewish or Phœnician adventurers used to
extract from a country long since lapsed into the darkest barbarism took
a great hold upon my imagination, when suddenly he said to me, 'Lad,
did you ever hear of the Suliman Mountains up to the north-west of the
Mushakulumbwe country?' I told him I never had. 'Ah, well,' he said,
'that is where Solomon really had his mines, his diamond mines, I

mean.'
"'How do you know that?' I asked.
"'Know it! why, what is "Suliman" but a corruption of Solomon?[*]
Besides, an old Isanusi or witch doctoress up in the Manica country
told me all about it. She said that the people who lived across those
mountains were a "branch" of the Zulus, speaking a dialect of Zulu, but
finer and bigger men even; that there lived among them great wizards,
who had learnt their art from white men when "all the world was dark,"
and who had the secret of a wonderful mine of "bright stones."'
[*] Suliman is the Arabic form of Solomon.--Editor.
"Well, I laughed at this story at the time, though it interested me, for
the Diamond Fields were not discovered then, but poor Evans went off
and was killed, and for twenty years I never thought any more of the
matter. However, just twenty years afterwards--and that is a long time,
gentlemen; an elephant hunter does not often live for twenty years at
his business--I heard something more definite about Suliman's
Mountains and the country which lies beyond them. I was up beyond
the Manica country, at a place called Sitanda's Kraal, and a miserable
place it was, for a man could get nothing to eat, and there was but little
game about. I had an attack of fever,