H. Rider Haggard 
King Solomon’s Mines 
A Novel

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Now that this book is printed. And about to be given to the world, a sense of its shortcomings, both in style and contents, weighs very heavily upon me. As regards the latter, I can only say thatit does not pretend to be a full account of everything we did and saw. There are many things connected with our journey into Kuku analand that I should have liked to dwell upon at length, which, as it is, have been scarcely alluded to. Amongst these are the curious legends which I collected about the chain armour that saved us from destruction in the great battle of Loo, and also about the Silent Ones or Colossi at the mouth of the stalactite cave. Again, if I had given way to my own impulses, I should have wished to go into the differences, some of which are to my mind very suggestive, between the Zulu and Kukuana dia lects. Also a few pages might have been given up profitably to the consideration of the indi genous flora and fauna of Kukuanaland.’