Heart of the World

A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook Title: Heart of the World
(1895) Author: H. Rider Haggard eBook No.: 0500081.txt Edition: 1
Language: English Character set encoding: Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit
Date first posted: January 2005 Date most recently updated: January
2005
This eBook was produced by: John Bickers and Dagny
Production Note:
This text was prepared from an 1896 edition published by Longmans,
Green and Co., and printed from American plates by Spottiswoode and
Co., New-Street Square, London.
Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed
editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright
notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a
particular paper edition.
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this file.
This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed
online at http://gutenberg.net
.au/licence.html
To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net
.au
Title: Heart of the World (1895) Author: H. Rider Haggard

DEDICATION

I inscribe this story of the Golden City
"Heart of the World"
to my namesake and godchild
Henry Rider Haggard
of Butler, U.S.A.
Ditchingham, Christmas Day, 1894.

PREPARER'S NOTE

HEART OF THE WORLD

PROLOGUE
DON IGNATIO
The circumstances under which the following pages come to be printed
are somewhat curious and worthy of record. Within the last few years a
certain English gentleman, whom we will call Jones, because it was not
his name, chanced to be employed as the manager of a mine not far
from the Usumacinto River, the upper reaches of which divide the
Mexican State of Chiapas from the Republic of Guatemala.
Now life at a mine in Chiapas, though doubtless it has some
compensations, does not altogether fulfil a European's ideal of
happiness. To begin with, the work is hard, desperately hard, and
though the climate is healthy enough among the mountains, there are
valleys where men may die of fever. Of sport, strictly speaking, there is
none, for the forests are too dense to hunt in with any comfort, and, if
they were not, the swarms of venomous insects of various degree, that

haunt them, would make this particular relaxation impossible.
Society also, as we understand it, is conspicuous by its absence, and
should a man chance even to be married, he could not well bring his
wife into regions that are still very unsettled, across forest paths,
through rivers, and along the brinks of precipices, dangerous and
impassable enough to strike terror to the heart of the stoutest traveller.
When Mr. Jones had dwelt for a year at the mines of La Concepcion,
the fact of his loneliness, and a desire for acquaintances more congenial
than the American clerk of the stores and his Indian labourers, came
home to him with some force. During the first months of his residence
he had attempted to make friends with the owners of some
neighbouring /fincas/ or farms. This attempt, however, he soon gave up
in disgust, for these men proved to be half-breeds of the lowest class,
living in an atmosphere of monotonous vice.
In this emergency, being a person of intelligence, Jones fell back upon
intellectual resources, and devoted himself, so far as his time would
allow, to the collection of antiquities, and to the study of such of the
numerous ruins of pre-Aztec cities and temples as lay within his reach.
The longer he pursued these researches, the more did they fascinate his
imagination. Therefore, when he chanced to hear that, on the farther
side of the mountain, at a /hacienda/ called Santa Cruz, there dwelt an
Indian, Don Ignatio by name, the owner of the /hacienda/, who was
reported to have more knowledge of the /antiguos/, their history and
relics, than anybody else in this part of Mexico, he determined to visit
him upon the first opportunity.
This, indeed, he would have done before, for Don Ignatio boasted an
excellent reputation, had it not been for the length of the journey to his
home. Now, however, the difficulty was lessened by an Indian who
offered to point out a practicable path over the mountain, which
brought the /hacienda/ of Santa Cruz to within a three-hours' ride on
mule-back from La Concepcion, in place of the ten hours that were
necessary to reach it by the more frequented road. Accordingly, one
day in the dry season, when work was slack at the mine, owing to the
water having fallen too low to turn the crushing-mill, Jones started.

This was on a Saturday, for on the Monday previous he had despatched
a runner to Don