The Project Gutenberg EBook of Elissa, by H. Rider Haggard

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Title: Elissa

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Release Date: March 31, 2006 [EBook #2855]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ELISSA ***

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 thos