King Solomon's Mines is an 1885 popular novel by the English Victorian adventure writer and fabulist H. Rider Haggard. Published by Cassell and Company, it tells of an expedition through an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain, searching for the missing brother of one of the party. It is one of the first English adventure novels set in Africa and is considered to be the genesis of the lost world literary genre. It is the first of fourteen novels and four short stories by Haggard about Allan Quatermain.
Background
The book was first published in September 1885 amid considerable fanfare, with billboards and posters around London announcing "The Most Amazing Book Ever Written." It became an immediate best seller. By the late 19th century, explorers were uncovering ancient civilisations and their remains around the world, such as Egypt's Valley of the Kings and the empire of Assyria. Inner Africa remained largely unexplored and King Solomon's Mines, one of the first novels of African adventure published in English, captured the public's imagination. who, the Bible reports, were rivals of and frequently at war with King Solomon. The Bible does refer to King Solomon having sent out, in partnership with his Phoenician allies, trading expeditions along the Red Sea, which brought exotic wares and animals from Africa to Jerusalem. Muslim traders in Sofala, Mozambique, told Portuguese travellers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the region's gold mines belonged to King Solomon and that he built the now-ruined city of Great Zimbabwe.
Haggard knew Africa well, having travelled deep within the continent during the Anglo-Zulu War and the First Boer War, where he had been impressed by South Africa's vast mineral wealth and by the ruins of ancient lost cities, such as Great Zimbabwe, being uncovered. His original Allan Quatermain character was based in large part on Frederick Selous, the British white hunter and explorer of Africa. Selous's real-life experiences provided Haggard with the background and inspiration for this and many later stories.
Haggard also owed a considerable literary debt to Joseph Thomson, the Scottish explorer whose book Through Masai Land was published in 1885. Thomson claimed he had terrified warriors in Kenya by taking out his false teeth and claiming to be a magician, just as Captain Good does in King Solomon's Mines. Contemporary James Runciman wrote an article entitled King Plagiarism and His Court, interpreted as accusing Haggard of plagiarism for this. Thomson was so outraged at Haggard's alleged plagiarism that he published a novel of his own, Ulu: an African Romance, which, however, failed to sell.
Plot
thumb|right|The way to Kukuanaland
thumb|"To those who enter the hall of the dead, evil comes"; [[Walter Paget (illustrator)|Walter Paget]]
Adventurer Allan Quatermain, a white hunter based in the African city of Durban, is approached by aristocrat Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good, seeking his help finding Sir Henry's brother, who was last seen travelling north into the unexplored interior on a quest for the fabled King Solomon's Mines. Quatermain has a map purporting to lead to the mines, but had never taken it seriously. He agrees to lead an expedition in return for a share of the treasure, or a stipend for his son if he is killed along the way. He has little hope they will return alive, but reasons that he has already outlived most people in his profession, so dying in this manner at least ensures his son will be provided for. They also take along a native, Umbopa, who seems more regal and well-spoken than most porters of his class, but who is anxious to join the party.
Travelling by oxcart, they reach the edge of a desert, but not before a hunt in which a wounded elephant claims the life of a servant. They continue on foot across the desert, almost dying of thirst before finding the oasis shown halfway across on the map. Reaching a mountain range called Suliman Berg, they climb a peak (one of "Sheba's Breasts"), enter a cave and find the frozen corpse of José Silvestre, the 16th century Portuguese explorer who drew the map in his own blood. That night, another servant dies from the cold, and they leave his body next to Silvestra's.
They cross the mountains into Kukuanaland, a raised valley, lush and green. The inhabitants have a well-organised army and society and speak an ancient dialect of IsiZulu. Kukuanaland's capital is Loo, the destination of a road from ancient times. The city is dominated by a central royal kraal.
A party of Kukuana warriors are about to kill them when Captain Good nervously fidgets with his false teeth, making the Kukuanas recoil in fear. Thereafter, to protect themselves, they style themselves "white men from the stars"—sorcerer-gods—and are required to give regular proof of their divinity, considerably straining both their nerves and their ingenuity.
They are brought before King Twala, a vicious leader. He came to power years before by murdering his brother, the previous king, and driving his brother's wife and infant son, Ignosi, out into the desert to die. Twala's rule is unchallenged. Gagool, an impossibly ancient hag, is his chief advisor. She roots out any potential opposition by ordering regular witch hunts and murdering without trial all those identified as traitors. When she singles out Umbopa for this fate, it takes all of Quatermain's skill to save his life.
Gagool, it appears, has already sensed what Umbopa later reveals: he is Ignosi, the rightful king of the Kukuanas. A rebellion breaks out, the Englishmen gaining support for Ignosi by taking advantage of their foreknowledge of a lunar eclipse to claim that they will black out the moon as proof of Ignosi's claim.