Elissa; Or, The Doom of Zimbabwe. H. Rider Haggard

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       H. Rider Haggard

      Elissa; Or, The Doom of Zimbabwe

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664611284

Table of Contents

       To the Memory of the Child

       ELISSA

       CHAPTER I

       THE CARAVAN

       CHAPTER II

       THE GROVE OF BAALTIS

       CHAPTER III

       ITHOBAL THE KING

       CHAPTER IV

       THE DREAM OF ISSACHAR

       CHAPTER V

       THE PLACE OF SACRIFICE

       CHAPTER VI

       THE HALL OF AUDIENCE

       CHAPTER VII

       THE BLACK DWARF

       CHAPTER VIII

       AZIEL PLIGHTS HIS TROTH

       CHAPTER IX

       GREETING TO THE BAALTIS

       CHAPTER X

       THE EMBASSY

       CHAPTER XI

       METEM SELLS IMAGES

       CHAPTER XII

       THE TRYST

       CHAPTER XIII

       THE SACRILEGE OF AZIEL

       CHAPTER XIV

       THE MARTYRDOM OF ISSACHAR

       CHAPTER XV

       ELISSA TAKES SANCTUARY

       CHAPTER XVI

       THE CAGE OF DEATH

       CHAPTER XVII

       “THERE IS HOPE”

      DEDICATION

       Table of Contents

To the Memory of the Child

       Table of Contents

      Nada Burnham,

      who “bound all to her” and, while her father cut his way through the hordes of the Ingobo Regiment, perished of the hardships of war at Buluwao on 19th May, 1896, I dedicate these tales—and more particularly the last, that of a Faith which triumphed over savagery and death.

      H. Rider Haggard.

      Ditchingham.

      AUTHOR’S NOTE

      Of the three stories that comprise this volume[*], one, “The Wizard,” a tale of victorious faith, first appeared some years ago as a Christmas Annual. Another, “Elissa,” is an attempt, difficult enough owing to the scantiness of the material left to us by time, to recreate the life of the ancient Phoenician Zimbabwe, whose ruins still stand in Rhodesia, and, with the addition of the necessary love story, to suggest circumstances such as might have brought about or accompanied its fall at the hands of the surrounding savage tribes. The third, “Black Heart and White Heart,” is a story of the courtship, trials and final union of a pair of Zulu lovers in the time of King Cetywayo.

      [*] This text was prepared from a volume published in 1900

       titled “Black Heart and White Heart, and Other Stories.”—

       JB.

      NOTE

      The world is full of ruins, but few of them have an origin so utterly lost in mystery as those of Zimbabwe in South Central Africa. Who built them? What purpose did they serve? These are questions that must have perplexed many generations, and many different races of men.

      The researches of Mr. Wilmot prove to us indeed that in the Middle Ages Zimbabwe or Zimboe was the seat of a barbarous empire, whose ruler was named the Emperor of Monomotapa, also that for some years the Jesuits ministered in a Christian church built beneath the shadow of its ancient towers. But of the original purpose of those towers, and of the race that reared them, the inhabitants of mediæval Monomotapa, it is probable, knew less even than we know to-day. The labours and skilled observation of the late Mr. Theodore Bent, whose death is so great a loss to all interested in such matters,