Elissa
OR THE DOOM OF ZIMBABWE
by H. Rider Haggard
Contents
DEDICATION
To the Memory of the Child
Nada Burnham,
who “bound all to her” and, while her father cut his way throughthe hordes of the Ingobo Regiment, perished of the hardships of war at Buluwaoon 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, “TheWizard,” a tale of victorious faith, first appeared some years ago as aChristmas Annual. Another, “Elissa,” is an attempt, difficultenough owing to the scantiness of the material left to us by time, to recreatethe life of the ancient Phœnician Zimbabwe, whose ruins still stand inRhodesia, and, with the addition of the necessary love story, to suggestcircumstances such as might have brought about or accompanied its fall at thehands of the surrounding savage tribes. The third, “Black Heart and WhiteHeart,” is a story of the courtship, trials and final union of a pair ofZulu lovers in the time of King Cetywayo.
[*] This text was prepared from a volume published in 1900 titled “BlackHeart and White Heart, and Other Stories.”— JB.
NOTE
The world is full of ruins, but few of them have an origin so utterly lost inmystery as those of Zimbabwe in South Central Africa. Who built them? Whatpurpose did they serve? These are questions that must have perplexed manygenerations, and many different races of men.
The researches of Mr. Wilmot pr