



Produced by John Bickers; Dagny





ELISSA

OR THE DOOM OF ZIMBABWE

by H. Rider Haggard




DEDICATION

To the Memory of the Child

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 Buluwayo 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 mediaeval 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, have shown almost beyond
question that Zimbabwe was once an inland Phoenician city, or at the
least a city whose inhabitants were of a race which practised Phoenician
customs and worshipped the Phoenician deities. Beyond this all is
conjecture. How it happened that a trading town, protected by vast
fortifications and adorned with temples dedicated to the worship of the
gods of the Sidonians--or rather trading towns, for Zimbabwe is only one
of a group of ruins--were built by civilised men in the heart of Africa
perhaps we shall never learn with certainty, though the discovery of
the burying-places of their inhabitants might throw some light upon the
problem.

But if actual proof is lacking, it is scarcely to be doubted--for the
numerous old workings in Rhodesia tell their own tale--that it was the
presence of payable gold reefs worked by slave labour which tempted the
Phoenician merchants and chapmen, contrary to their custom, to travel
so far from the sea and establish themselves inland. Perhaps the city
Zimboe was the Ophir spoken of in the first Book of Kings. At least, it
is almost certain that its principal industries were the smelting and
the sale of gold, also it seems probable that expeditions travelling by
sea and land would have occupied quite three years of time in reaching
it from Jerusalem and returning thither laden with the gold and precious
stones, the ivory and the almug trees (