The Project Gutenberg EBook of Queen Sheba's Ring, by H. Rider Haggard

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Title: Queen Sheba's Ring

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Release Date: April 3, 2006 [EBook #2602]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEEN SHEBA'S RING ***

Produced by John Bickers; Emma Dudding; Dagny

QUEEN SHEBA'S RING

by H. Rider Haggard

CHAPTER I

THE COMING OF THE RING

Every one has read the monograph, I believe that is the right word,
of my dear friend, Professor Higgs--Ptolemy Higgs to give him his full
name--descriptive of the tableland of Mur in North Central Africa, of
the ancient underground city in the mountains which surrounded it,
and of the strange tribe of Abyssinian Jews, or rather their mixed
descendants, by whom it is, or was, inhabited. I say every one
advisedly, for although the public which studies such works is usually
select, that which will take an interest in them, if the character of a
learned and pugnacious personage is concerned, is very wide indeed. Not
to mince matters, I may as well explain what I mean at once.

Professor Higgs's rivals and enemies, of whom either the brilliancy
of his achievements or his somewhat abrupt and pointed methods of
controversy seem to have made him a great many, have risen up, or rather
seated themselves, and written him down--well, an individual who strains
the truth. Indeed, only this morning one of these inquired, in a letter
to the press, alluding to some adventurous traveller who, I am told,
lectured to the British Association several years ago, whether Professor
Higgs did not, in fact, ride across the desert to Mur, not upon a camel,
as he alleged, but upon a land tortoise of extraordinary size.

The innuendo contained in this epistle has made the Professor, who, as
I have already hinted, is not by nature of a meek disposition, extremely
angry. Indeed, notwithstanding all that I could do, he left his London
house under an hour ago with a whip of hippopotamus hide such as the
Egyptians call a _koorbash_, purposing to avenge himself upon the person
of his defamer. In order to prevent a public scandal, however, I have
taken the liberty of tel