The People of the Mist

The People Of The Mist, by H.
Rider Haggard

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Title: The People Of The Mist
Author: H. Rider Haggard

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THE PEOPLE OF THE MIST By H. Rider Haggard
First Published 1894.

THE PEOPLE OF THE MIST
BY
H. RIDER HAGGARD

DEDICATION
I DEDICATE THIS EFFORT OF "PRIMEVAL AND TROGLODYTE
IMAGINATION" THIS RECORD OF BAREFACED AND
FLAGRANT ADVENTURE
TO MY GODSONS

IN THE HOPE THAT THEREIN THEY MAY FIND SOME STORE
OF HEALTHY AMUSEMENT.
Ditchingham, 1894.

AUTHOR'S NOTE
On several previous occasions it has happened to this writer of romance
to be justified of his romances by facts of startling similarity,
subsequently brought to light and to his knowledge. In this tale occurs
an instance of the sort, a "double-barrelled" instance indeed, that to him
seems sufficiently curious to be worthy of telling. The People of the
Mist of his adventure story worship a sacred crocodile to which they
make sacrifice, but in the original draft of the book this crocodile was a
snake--monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens. A friend of the writer,
an African explorer of great experience who read that draft, suggested
that the snake was altogether too unprecedented and impossible.
Accordingly, also at his suggestion, a crocodile was substituted.
Scarcely was this change effected, however, when Mr. R. T. Coryndon,
the slayer of almost the last white rhinoceros, published in the African
Review of February 17, 1894, an account of a huge and terrific serpent
said to exist in the Dichwi district of Mashonaland, that in many
particulars resembled the snake of the story, whose prototype, by the
way, really lives and is adored as a divinity by certain natives in the
remote province of Chiapas in Mexico. Still, the tale being in type, the
alteration was suffered to stand. But now, if the Zoutpansberg Review
may be believed, the author can take credit for his crocodile also, since
that paper states that in the course of the recent campaign against
Malaboch, a chief living in the north of the Transvaal, his fetish or god
was captured, and that god, a crocodile fashioned in wood, to which
offerings were made. Further, this journal says that among these people
(as with the ancient Egyptians), the worship of the crocodile is a
recognised cult. Also it congratulates the present writer on his intimate
acquaintance with the more secret manifestations of African folklore
and beast worship. He must disclaim the compliment in this instance as,
when engaged in inventing the 'People of the Mist,' he was totally

ignorant that any of the Bantu tribes reverenced either snake or
crocodile divinities. But the coincidence is strange, and once more
shows, if further examples of the fact are needed, how impotent are the
efforts of imagination to vie with hidden truths-- even with the hidden
truths of this small and trodden world.
September 20, 1894.

THE PEOPLE OF THE MIST
CHAPTER I
THE SINS OF THE FATHER ARE VISITED ON THE CHILDREN
The January afternoon was passing into night, the air was cold and still,
so still that not a single twig of the naked beech-trees stirred; on the
grass of the meadows lay a thin white rime, half frost, half snow; the
firs stood out blackly against a steel-hued sky, and over the tallest of
them hung a single star. Past these bordering firs there ran a road, on
which, in this evening of the opening of our story, a young man stood
irresolute, glancing now to the right