The Spirit of Bambatse

A romance, a shipwreck and a hunt for buried Portuguese treasure in the Transvaal. All the ingredients of an imperial adventure that made Haggard one of the best-selling authors of the early years of the twentieth century. Also published as Benita: An African Romance, The Spirit of Bambatse has been reprinted several times, notably as the 22nd volume of the celebrated Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy.

By : H. Rider Haggard (1856 - 1925)

00 - Author's note 01 - Confidences 02 - The end of the 'Zanzibar' 03 - How Robert came ashore 04 - Mr Clifford 05 - Jacob Meyer 06 - The gold coin 07 - The messengers 08 - Bambatse 09 - The oath of Maduna 10 - The mountain top 11 - The sleepers in the cave 12 - The beginning of the search 13 - Benita plans escape 14 - The flight 15 - The chase 16 - Back at Bambatse 17 - The first experiment 18 - The other Benita 19 - The awaking 20 - Jacob Meyer sees a spirit 21 - The message from the dead 22 - The voice of the living 23 - Benita gives her answer 24 - The true gold

NOTES

     It may interest readers of this story to know that its author

     believes it to have a certain foundation in fact.

     It was said about five-and-twenty or thirty years ago that an

     adventurous trader, hearing from some natives in the territory

     that lies at the back of Quilimane, the legend of a great treasure

     buried in or about the sixteenth century by a party of Portuguese

     who were afterwards massacred, as a last resource attempted its

     discovery by the help of a mesmerist. According to this history

     the child who was used as a subject in the experiment, when in a

     state of trance, detailed the adventures and death of the unhappy

     Portuguese men and women, two of whom leapt from the point of a

     high rock into the Zambesi. Although he knew no tongue but

     English, this clairvoyant child is declared to have repeated in

     Portuguese the prayers these unfortunates offered up, and even to

     have sung the very hymns they sang. Moreover, with much other

     detail, he described the burial of the great treasure and its

     exact situation so accurately that the white man and the mesmerist

     were able to dig for and find the place where it had been—for

     the bags were gone, swept out by the floods of the river.

     Some gold coins remained, however, one of them a ducat of Aloysius

     Mocenigo, Doge of Venice. Afterwards the boy was again thrown into

     a trance (in all he was mesmerized eight times), and revealed

     where the sacks still lay; but before the white trader could renew

     his search for them, the party was hunted out of the country by

     natives whose superstitious fears were aroused, barely escaping

     with their lives.

     It should be added that, as in the following tale, the chief who

     was ruling there when the tragedy happened, declared the place to

     be sacred, and that if it were entered evil would befall his

     tribe. Thus it came about that for generations it was never

     violated, until at length his descendants were driven farther from

     the river by war, and from one of them the white man heard the

     legend.