The Project Gutenberg EBook of The People Of The Mist, by H. Rider Haggard

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Title: The People Of The Mist

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Release Date: April 22, 2006 [EBook #6769]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PEOPLE OF THE MIST ***

Produced by John Bickers; Dagny

THE PEOPLE OF THE MIST

By H. Rider Haggard

First Published 1894.

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 n