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

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Title: Marie
An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Posting Date: October 23, 2008 [EBook #1690]
Release Date: April, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARIE ***

Produced by Christopher Hapka

MARIE

AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF THE LATE ALLAN QUATERMAIN

By H. Rider Haggard

Original Digital Editor's Note:

In the interest of readability, where italics are used to indicate
non-English words, I have silently omitted them or replaced them with
quotation marks.

DEDICATION

Ditchingham, 1912.

My dear Sir Henry,--

Nearly thirty-seven years have gone by, more than a generation, since
first we saw the shores of Southern Africa rising from the sea. Since
then how much has happened: the Annexation of the Transvaal, the Zulu
War, the first Boer War, the discovery of the Rand, the taking of
Rhodesia, the second Boer War, and many other matters which in these
quick-moving times are now reckoned as ancient history.

Alas! I fear that were we to re-visit that country we should find
but few faces which we knew. Yet of one thing we may be glad. Those
historical events, in some of which you, as the ruler of Natal, played
a great part, and I, as it chanced, a smaller one, so far as we can
foresee, have at length brought a period of peace to Southern Africa.
To-day the flag of England flies from the Zambesi to the Cape. Beneath
its shadow may all ancient feuds and blood jealousies be forgotten.
May the natives prosper also and be justly ruled, for after all in the
beginning the land was theirs. Such, I know, are your hopes, as they are
mine.

It is, however, with an earlier Africa that this story deals. In 1836,
hate and suspicion ran high between the Home Government and its
Dutch subjects. Owing to the freeing of the slaves and mutual
misunderstandings, the Cape Colony was then in tumult, almost in
rebellion, and the Boers, by thousands, sought new homes in the unknown,
savage-peopled North. Of this blood-stained time I have tried to
tell; of the Great Trek and its trage