Part 1 (1/2)

The Ancient Allan

by H Rider Haggard

CHAPTER I AN OLD FRIEND

Now I, Allan Quatermain, come to the weirdest (with one or two exceptions perhaps) of all the experiences which it has ae land, for after all England is strange to row elderly I have, as I suppose, passed the period of enterprise and adventure and I should be well satisfied with the lot that Fate has given to in with, I am still alive and in health when by all the rules I should have been dead ht to be thankful for that but, before expressing an opinion on the point, I should have to be quite sure whether it is better to be alive or dead The religious pluious are er to die than the rest of us poor mortals

For instance, if they are told that their holy hearts are wrong, they spend ti to a place called Nauhei, thereby shortening their hours of heavenly bliss and depriving their heirs of a certain ahbourhood and gout, especially when it threatens the stos, to say nothing of such sures of the Church

Froht be expected, but in the case of those who are obviously poised on the tops of the Jacobean--I iti off As a matter of fact the only persons that, individually, I have seen quite willing to die, except now and again to save somebody else whom they were so foolish as to care for more than they did for theht has shi+ned” to quote an earnest paper I chanced to read thisin their native blackness,” by which I understand the writer to refer to their moral state and not to their sable skins wherein for the most part they are also condemned to wander, that is if they happen to have been born south of a certain degree of latitude

To come to facts, the staff of Faith which each must shape for himself, is often hewn fro us Willow, for instance, is pretty and easy to cut, but try to support yourself with it on the edge of a precipice and see where you are Then of a truth you will long for ironbark, or even hoht carry my parable further, some allusions to the proper est themselves to me for example, but I won't

The truth is that we fear to die because all the religions are full of uncomfortable hints as to what may happen to us afterwards as a reward for our deviations fro, whereas often the savage, not being troubled with religion, fears less, because he half believes in nothing For very few inhabitants of this earth can attain either to complete belief or to its absolute opposite

They can seldom lay their hands upon their hearts, and say they _know_ that they will live for ever, or sleep for ever; there remains in the case of most honest men an element of doubt in either hypothesis

That is what , at any rate to est that whether or no I have a future, as personally I hold to be the case and not altogether without evidence, certainly I have had a past, though, so far as I know, in this world only; a fact, if it be a fact, fro to the taste of the reasoner

And now for my experience, which it is only fair to add,and connected dream Yet hoas I to dreauest knowledge, or none at all, unless indeed, as so a part of this world, we have hidden away so that has ever happened in the world However, it does not much matter and it is useless to discuss that which we cannot prove

Here at any rate is the story

In a book or a record which I have written down and put aith others under the title of ”The Ivory Child,” I have told the tale of a certain expedition I nall Its object was to search for his as stolen ahile travelling in Egypt in a state offroic and terrible circumstances The thieves were the priests of a certain bastard Arab tribe who, on account of a birth moon which was visible above her breast, believed her to be the priestess or oracle of their worshi+p This worshi+p evidently had its origin in Ancient Egypt since, although they did not see less than a personification of the great Goddess Isis, and the Ivory Child, their fetish, was a statue of the infant Horus, the fabled son of Isis and Osiris whoyptians looked upon as the overcomer of Set or the Devil, the murderer of Osiris before his resurrection and ascent to Heaven to be the God of the dead

I need not set down afresh all that happened to us on this remarkable adventure Suffice it to say that in the end we recovered the lady and that her mind was restored to her Before she left the Kendah country, however, the priesthood presented her with two ancient rolls of papyrus, also with a quantity of a certain herb, not unlike tobacco in appearance, which by the Kendah was called _Taduki_ Once, before we took our great honall and I had a curious conversation about this herb whereof the property is to cause the person who inhales its fumes to become clairvoyant, or to dream dreams, whichever the truth may be It was used for this purpose in the ion when under its influence the priestess or oracle of the Ivory Child ont to announce divine revelations During her tenure of this office Lady Ragnall was frequently subjected to the spell of the _Taduki_ vapour, and said strange things, some of which I heard with my own ears Also myself once I experienced its effects and saw a curious vision, whereof many of the particulars were afterwards translated into facts

Now the conversation which I have nall, believed a time would come when she or I or both of us, were destined to imbibe these _Taduki_ fumes and see wonderful pictures of some past or future existence in which ere both concerned This knowledge, she declared, had co in an apparently mindless condition as the priestess of the Kendah God called the Ivory Child

At the ti a subject with a woman whose mind had been recently unbalanced, and afterwards in the stress of new experiences, I forgot all about the ht of it very rarely

Once, however, it did recur to land to spenddays far fro a steward of a Charity dinner and, orse, into attending the said dinner Although its objects were admirable, it proved one of the most dreadful functions in which I was ever called upon to share There was a vast nuuished, who had come to support the Charity or to show off their Orders, I don't knohich, and others like uished, just common subscribers, who had no Orders and stood about the crowded roo for a job

At the dinner, which was very bad, I sat at a table so remote that I could hear but little of the interminable speeches, which was perhaps fortunate for me In these circuhbour, a queer, wizened, black-bearded man who somehow or other had found out that I was acquainted with the wilder parts of Africa He proved to be a wealthy scientist whose passion it was to study the properties of herbs, especially of such as grow in the interior of South A for soe, known to the Indians which, when pounded up into a paste and taken in the for the patient to see events that were passing at a distance Indeed he alleged that a vision thus produced had caused him to return home, since in it he saw that soerously ill In fact, however, he ht as well have stayed away, as he only arrived in London on the day after her funeral

As I saw that he was really interested in the subject and observed that he was a very te, I told hi of my experiences with _Taduki_, to which he listened with a kind of rapt but suppressed excitement When I affected disbelief in the whole business, he differed fro why I rejected phenomena simply because I was too dense to understand them I answered perhaps because such phenomena were inconvenient and upset one's ideas

To this he replied that all progress involved the upsetting of existent ideas Moreover he implored me, if the chance should ever come my way, to pursue experiments with _Taduki_ fumes and let him know the results

Here our conversation ca near by, struck up ”God save the Queen,” and we hastily exchanged cards and parted I only mention it because, had it not occurred, I think it probable that I should never have been in a position to write this history

The remarks of my acquaintance remained in my mind and influenced it so much that when the occasion came, I did as a kind of duty what, however much I was pressed, I am almost sure I should never have done for any other reason, just because I thought that I ought to take an opportunity of trying to discover as the truth of the

Here I should explain that I attended the dinner of which I have spoken not very long after a very lengthy absence fro Solomon's Mines had made me rich Therefore it happened that between the conclusion of my Kendah adventure so and heard little of Lord and Lady Ragnall Once a ruh Sir Henry Curtis or Captain Good, that the former had died as a result of an accident What the accident wason a far journey at the ti inquiries My talk with the botanical scientist determined me to do so; indeed a few days later I discovered fro no heir; also that his wife survived hi ht nall Castle”