King Solomon's Mines

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Title:     King Solomon's Mines
Author: Rounsevelle Wildman [More Titles by Wildman]

Being an Account of an Ascent of Mount Ophir
in Malaya, by His Excellency, the Tuan Hakim
of Maur, and the Writer.

"And they came to Ophir, and fetched
from thence gold, four hundred and
twenty talents, and brought it to
King Solomon."--1 Kings IX. 28.

"For the King's ships went to Tarshish
with the servants of Huram; every
three years once came the ships of
Tarshish, bringing gold and silver,
ivory, and apes, and peacocks."
--2 Chronicles VIII. 21.

The rose tints of a tropical sunrise had broken through the heavy bamboo chicks that jealously guarded the rapidly fleeting half-lights of my room: there came three deferential taps at the door, and the smiling, olive-tinted face of Ah Minga appeared at the opening. "Tabek, Tuan," he saluted, as he raised the mosquito curtains, and placed a tray of tea and mangosteens on a table by my side.

I sprang to the floor and across the heavily rugged room, and pulled up the offending chick.

Across the palace grounds, fresh from their morning bath, across the broad river Maur, for the nonce black in the shadow of the jungle, across the gilded tops of the jungle, forty miles away as the crow flies, rested the serrated peak of Mount Ophir.

Directly below me, a soldier in a uniform of duck and a rimless cap with a gold band was pacing up and down the gravelled walk. A little farther on a bevy of women and children were bathing in the tepid waters of the river, while a man in an unpainted prau was keeping watch for a possible crocodile.

The sun was rising directly behind the peak, a ball of liquid fire. I drew in a long draught of the warm morning air.

A Malay in a soft silken sarong, which fell about his legs like a woman's skirt, stood in the door.

"The Prince is awaiting the Tuan Consul," he said, with a graceful salaam.

I hurriedly donned my suit of white, drank my tea, and followed him along the grand salon, down a broad flight of steps, through a marble court, and into the dining room.

A great white punkah was lazily vibrating over the heavy rosewood table.

Unko Sulliman, the Prince Governor of Maur, came forward and gave me his hand.

"It will be a hard climb and a hard day's work?" he said, pleasantly, in good English.

"I have done worse," I answered.

"But not under a Malayan sky. However, it is your wish, and his Highness the Sultan has granted it. The Chief Justice will accompany you, and now you had better start before the sun is high."

I turned to the Tuan Hakim, or Chief Justice, with a gesture of unconcealed pleasure. We had shot crocodiles the day previous along the banks of the Maur, and I had found him a good shot and an agreeable companion. While not as handsome a man or as striking a representative of his race as the Unko, or Prince, he was a scholar, and could aid me more than any one else in my exploration of the ancient gold workings about the base of the famous mountain.

The launch was awaiting us at the pier in front of the Residency, and we took our places in the bow, and arranged our guns as our half-naked crew worked her slowly into mid-stream. We hoped to get some snap shots at the crocodiles that lined the banks as we steamed swiftly up the river.

"I am inclined to agree with Josephus, that yonder mountain is the Mount Ophir of Solomon, when I look at this river. It is equal to our Hudson, and could easily carry ships twice the size of any he or Huram ever floated."

The Tuan Hakim nodded, and kept his eyes fastened on the nearest shore.

The course of the great river seemed to stretch out before us in an endless line of majestic circles. From shore to shore, at high tide, it was a mile in breadth, and so deep that his Highness's yacht, the Pante, of three hundred tons' burden, could run up full fifty miles.

For a moment we caught a view of the wooden minarets of the little mosque at Bander Maharani; then we dashed on into the heart of another great curve.

"What is it your Koran says that the wise king's ships brought from Ophir?" he asked, never taking his eyes off the mangrove-bound shore.

"Gold and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks," I replied, quoting literally from Chronicles.

"Biak (good)! Gold and silver we have plenty. Your English companies are taking it out of the land by the pikul In the old days, before the Portuguese came, the handle of every warrior's kris was of ivory. Now our elephants are dying before the rifle of the sportsman. Soon our jungles will know them no more. Apes--" and he pointed at the top of a giant marbow, where a troop of silver wah-wahs were swinging from limb to limb. "The glorious argus pheasant you have seen."

"Boyah, Tuan!" the man at the wheel sung out.

I grasped my Winchester Express. Just ahead, half hidden by a black labyrinth of scaffold-like mangrove roots, lay the huge, mud-covered form of a crocodile.

The Tuan Hakim raised his hand, and the launch slowed down and ran in under the bank.

"Now!" he whispered, and our rifles exploded in unison.

A great splash of slimy red mud fell full on the front of my spotless white jacket, another struck in the water close by the side of the boat. The wounded crocodile had sprung into the air from his tail up, and dropped back into his wallow with a resounding thud. In another instant he was off the slippery bank and within the security of the mud-colored water.

I saw that my companion had more to tell me, possibly a native tradition of the fabled riches that were concealed within the heart of the historic mountain that was for the moment framed in a setting of green, directly ahead. I put a fresh cartridge into the barrel, and leaned back in my deck chair.

The Chief Justice extracted a manila from his case and handed it to me.

"In the days when Tunku Ali III. ruled over Maur, from Malacca to the confines of Johore, the Portuguese came, and Albuquerque with his ships of war and soldiers in iron armor sought to wrest from our people their cities and their riches. My ancestor was a dato,--our laksamana, high admiral, of his Highness's fleet. His galley was built of burnished teak, the lining of its cabin was of sandalwood,--algum wood your Koran calls it,--and the turret in its stern was covered with plates of solid gold. You will find record of it to this day in the state papers of Acheen.

"For fully a hundred and forty years did the Emperor of Johore and his valiant allies, the King of Acheen and the Sultan of Maur, seek to retake Malacca from the Portuguese. The Dato Mamat was the last laksamana of the fleet. With him died the war and the secret of Mount Ophir."

"The secret!" I questioned, as the Tuan Hakim paused.

"For one hundred and forty years were we at war with the invaders. Three generations were born and died with arms in their hands. No work was done on the land, save by women and children. Still we had plenty of gold with which to fit out fleet after fleet, with which to arm our soldiers and feed our people.

"It came from yonder mountain. Not even the Sultan knew its hiding-place. That was only trusted to one family, and handed from father to son by word of mouth.

"Long before the days of Solomon the Wise did my family hold that secret for the state. It was one of them that gave the four hundred and twenty talents to the laksamana of Huram's fleet. Your Koran has made record of the gift. He did not know from whence it came. He asked, and we told him from the Ophirs, which means from the gold mines. Then it was that he called the mountain that raised its head four thousand feet above the sea, and was the first object his lookout saw as they neared the coast, 'Mount Ophir.'

"No man, however so bold, ventured within a radius of fifteen miles around the foot of the mountain. It was haunted by evil spirits. No man save the laksamana, who went twice a year and brought away to his prau, which was moored on the bank of the Maur thirty miles from the mountains, ten great loads of pure gold, each time over one hundred bugels. I know not as to the truth, but it is told that there was one tribe consecrated to the mining of the gold, not one of whom had ever been outside the shadow of the mountain: that when the great admiral ceased to come, they blocked up the entrance to the mines, planted trees about the spot, and waited. One after another died, until not one was left.

"Such is the tradition of my family, Tuan."

"But the great laksamana?" I asked. "I know of the ancient riches of Malacca. Barbosa tells us that gold was so common that it was reckoned by the bhar of four hundred weight."

My companion contemplated the end of his manila. "Do you know how died his Highness, Montezuma of Mexico, Tuan?"

I bowed.

"So died my ancestor one hundred years later. I will tell you of it, that you may write his name in your histories by the side of the name of the murdered Sultan of Mexico."

The eyes of the little man flashed, and he looked squarely into mine for the first time. Possibly he may have detected a smile on my face, at the thought of placing this leader of a band of pirates side by side in history with the once ruler of the richest empire in the New World, for he paused in the midst of his narrative and said rapidly:--

"Must I tell you what your own writers tell of the rulers of our country, to make you credit my tale? It is all here," he said, pointing to his head. "Everything that relates to my home I know. King Emmanuel of Portugal wrote to his High Kadi at Rome, that his general, the cruel Albuquerque, had sailed to the Aurea Chersonese, called by the natives Malacca, and found an enormous city of twenty-five thousand houses, that abounded in spices, gold, pearls, and precious stones. Was Montezuma's capital greater?" he triumphantly asked.

"It was as great then as Singapore is today. Albuquerque captured it, and built a fortress at the mouth of the river, making the walls fifteen feet thick, all from the ruins of our mosques. This was in 1513."

"Forgive me," I said hastily, "if I have seemed to cast doubt on the relative importance of your country."

There was a Malay kampong, or village, to our right. Under the heavy green and yellow fronds of a cocoanut grove were a half-dozen picturesque palm-thatched houses. They were built up on posts six feet from the ground, and a dozen men and children scampered down their rickety ladders, as a shrill blast from our whistle aroused them from their slumbers. Pressed against the wooden bars of their low, narrow windows, we could make out the comely, brown faces of the women. The punghulo, or chief, walked sedately out to the beach, and touched his forehead to the ground as he recognized his superior. The sunlight broke through the enwrapping cocoanuts, and brought out dazzling white splotches on the sandy floor before the houses. We passed a little space of wiry lallang grass, which was waving in the faint breeze, and radiating long, irregular lines of heat, that under our glasses resembled the marking of watered silk, and were once more abreast the green walls of the impenetrable jungle.

"The Dato Mamat captured a Portuguese ship within a man's voice from the harbor of Malacca. On it was the foreign Governor's daughter. She was dark, almost as dark as my people. Her eyes were black as night, with long, drooping lashes, and her hair fell about her shapely neck, a mass of waving curls. She was tall and stately, and her bearing was haughty. The mighty Laksamana, who had fought a hundred battles, and had a hundred wives picked from the princesses of the kingdom,--for there were none so noble but felt honored in his smiles,--loved this dark-skinned foreigner. It was pitiful!

"His great fleet, which was to have swept the very name of the Portuguese from the face of the earth, lay idle before the harbor. Its captains were burning with ambition, but the Admiral would not give the command, and they dare not disobey.

"Day after day went by while the great man hung like a pariah dog on the words of his haughty captive. She scorned his words of love, laughed at his prayers, and sneered at his devotion. Day after day the sun beat down on the burnished decks of the war praus. Night after night the evening gun in the besieged fort sent forth its mocking challenge: still the Dato made no motion. Oh, but it was pitiful! One by one the praus slipped away,--first those from Acheen, and then those from Johore,--but the valiant Laksamana saw them not. He was blind to all save one. Then she spoke: 'If thou lovest me as thou boastest, and would win my smiles, send me to my father; then go and bring me of this gold of Ophir,--for the Dato had laid his heart bare before her,--enough to sink yon boat. The daughter of a Braganza does not unite herself with a pauper. When the moon is full again, I will expect you.'

"So did the Laksamana, to the everlasting shame of Islam. When the moon was full he returned in his shining prau before the walls of Malacca, He brought from Ophir, of gold more than enough; of the pearls of Ceylon he brought a chupah full to the brim. He robbed his great palace, that he might lay at the feet of the Portuguese a fortune such as Solomon only ever saw. And yet the captains of his fleet cared not for the gold, so long as the mighty Dato saved his honor. When he left for the quay, on which stood the Governor, his daughter, and the priests of their religion, they said not a word, for he passed by with averted face; but each man grasped the jewelled handle of his kris, and swore to Allah under his breath that should but one hair of the mighty Admiral's head be lacking when he returned, they would cut the false heart from the woman and feed it to the dogs.

"So spoke the captains; but ere the breath had passed their lips their chief was a prisoner, and the guns from the fort hurled defiance at the betrayed.

"It was pitiful! Allah was avenged.

"Fiercely raged the battle, and when there was a breach in the walls, and the captain besar had ordered the attack, the Portuguese held the mighty Laksamana over the walls, and reviled the allied fleets with words of derision.

"Not one moved, and all was still. Suddenly the Admiral raised his head, and gazed out and down at his followers. Then he spoke, and the sound of his voice reached far out to the most distant prau that lay becalmed within the shadow of casuarina-shaded Puli.

"'Allah il Allah, I have sinned, and I must die. No more shall my name be known in the land. I am no longer laksamana; neither am I a dato. Allah is just. Tuan Allah Suka!'

"A foreigner smote him in the mouth, and a great cry arose from without the walls.

"The war went on; but day after day did the Governor send a message to the Laksamana in the dungeon. 'Reveal the spot where thy gold is hidden, and thy life and liberty are granted.'

"Day by day the Dato replied, 'My life is a pollution in the nostrils of Allah. Take it.'

"So they laid the great chief on the stones of his cell, bound hand and foot, and one by one did they break the joints of his toes, his fingers, and then the joints of his legs and arms. When they had finished, and he still lived, the woman came to him and mocked him, but the Admiral closed his eyes and prayed. 'O Allah, the all-merciful and the loving kind, forgive me for my erring heart. Thou knowest that it goes out to this woman still. Let not my country suffer for my deeds. I gave unto thy servant Solomon of the gold that has made us great. If thou canst, thou wilt whisper the secret of our nation to one of thy chosen people, that they may have means whereby to fight thy battles.'

"And then the woman raised her hand, and with one stroke of the axe an attendant severed from his body the head of the once mighty Laksamana of the fleets of Johore, Acheen and Maur.

"So died the secret of Ophir. So fell Malacca forever into the hands of the foreigner."

The Tuan Hakim's voice trembled as he closed. During the tragic recital he had dropped into the soft, melodious chant of his nation. At times he would lapse into Malay, and the boatmen would push forward and listen with unconcealed excitement. Then, as he returned to English, they would drop back into their places, but never take their eyes off the face of the speaker. Only our China "boys" took no interest in the past of Maur. It was tiffin time, and they were anxious to set before us our lunch of rice curry, gula Malacca, whiskey and soda.

The sun was directly above us, and the fierce, steely glare of the Malayan sky and water dazzled our eyes. Mount Ophir looked as far ahead as ever. The winding course of the river seemed at times to take us directly away from it.

Just as we had finished our meal, and had lighted our manilas, the steersman turned the little launch sharply about, and headed directly for the shore. In a moment we had shot under and through the deep fringe of mangrove trees, and had emerged into the jungle. On all sides the trees rose, columnar and straight, and the ground was firm, although densely covered with ferns and vines.

The launch stopped, and the chief turned to me. "Now for the climb. We have thirty miles to the base of the mountain. We will push on ten miles, and spend the night at a Malay village. The next day we will try and reach the base of the mountain."

I looked about me. We might have been surrounded by prison walls, for all hope there seemed to be of our getting an inch into the jungle.

Our servants gathered up our rather extensive impedimenta, and sprang into the water. We were forced to follow suit, and begin our day's march with wet feet. A few steps up the stream we came upon an old elephant track and plunged boldly in,--and it was in! For three miles we labored through a series of the most elaborate mud-holes that I have ever seen. The elephants in breaking a path through the jungle are extremely timid in their boldness. The second one always steps in the footprints of the first. Year after year it is the same, until in course of time the path is marked by a series of pitfalls, often two feet in depth; and as it rains nearly every day they become a seething, slimy paste of mud.

Our heavy cloth shoes and stockings did not protect us from the attacks of innumerable leeches; for when we at last reached an open bit of forest and sat down to rest, we found dozens of them attached to our legs and even on our bodies. They were small, and beautifully marked with stripes of bright yellow.

It was twilight when we neared the welcome kampong. We had sent a runner ahead to notify the punghulo of our arrival, and as we finished our struggle with the last thorny rattan, and tripped over the last rubber-vine, we could hear the shouting of men and the barking of dogs. Evidently we were expected.

The kampong might have been any other in the kingdom, and the little old weazened punghulo, who came bowing and smiling forward, might have been at the head of any one of a hundred other kampongs,--they were all so much alike. A half-dozen attap bungalows, built under a cocoanut grove, all facing toward a central plaza; a score of dogs for each bungalow; a flock of featherless fowls scratching and wallowing beneath them, and a bevy of half-naked children playing with a rattan ball within the light of a central fire,--made up the details of a little picture of Malayan home life that had become very familiar to me within the last three years.

Our servants at once set about preparing supper before the fire, while we for politeness' sake compounded a mouthful of betel-nut and syrah leaf from the punghulo's state box.

The next morning we set out for our twenty miles' tramp, along a narrow jungle path, accompanied by some ten natives of the village whom my companion had retained to cut a path for us up the mountain. It was a long, tiresome journey, and we were heartily glad when it was ended, and we were encamped on the rocky banks of a fern-hid stream.

Twice during our day's march had we crossed deep, ragged depressions in the earth, which were overgrown with a jungle that seemed to be coequal in age with the surrounding trees. We did not pause to examine them, although our natives pointed them out with the expressive word mas (gold). We promised to do that at a later date. On the border of the creek I found some gold-bearing rock, and while the Tuan Hakim was engaged in securing some superb specimens of the great atlas moth, I sat down and crushed some fragments of it, and obtained enough gold to satisfy me that the rock would run four ounces to the ton.

It was a beautiful night. We lay under our mosquito netting, and gazed up through the interlacing branches of the trees at the star-strewn sky, and smoked our manilas in weary content. The long, full "coo-ee" of the stealthy argus pheasant sounded at intervals in distant parts of the forest. It might have been the call of the orang-utan, or the wild hillmen of the country, for they have imitated the call of this most glorious of birds.

The shrill, never ceasing whir of the cicada hardly attracted our attention; while the whistle and crash of a monkey that was inspecting us from his perch among the trees above caused me to peer upward, in hopes of catching a glimpse of his grayish outlines.

I had not had an opportunity of asking my companion for the details of his tragic story. I turned to him, and found him watching me attentively. "Were you listening to the call of the coo-ee?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered.

"It is the queen of birds. I will get you one. I have never shot one. They only come out at night, and then only to disappear, but we can trap them. It will die in captivity. That is why Solomon could not keep them, and sent for new ones every three years."

"What became of the woman?" I asked.

"The body of the Laksamana was thrown over the walls by the Portuguese," he said moodily. "It was embalmed and laid away. Two months from that day the woman was walking outside the walls. The war was over. There was no more gold. Three of my people sprang upon her and the Portuguese she was to marry." He paused for a moment and looked up at the stars, then went on in a cold, matter-of-fact tone. "They were lashed to the headless body of the man they had murdered, and thrown into the royal tiger-cage, by order of his Highness, Ali, Sultan of Maur."

I raised my curtain and threw the stub of my cigar out into the darkness, a smothered exclamation of horror escaping my lips.

"It was the will of Allah. Good night."

It was nearly nine o'clock the next morning before we started. Our Malays had gone on at daybreak, to cut a path up the base of the mountain to where the open forest began.

We ascended steadily up a moderate slope for several miles, keeping the ravine on our left. It was comparatively easy work after we had left the jungle behind. After crossing a level plateau we once more found ourselves in a forest so dense that our men had to use their parangs again. The heat of the jungle was intense, and we suffered severely from the stings of a fly that is not unlike a cicada in shape.

From the jungle we emerged into an immense stone field,--padang-batu, the Malays called it. It extended along the mountain side as far as we could see, in places quite bare, at others deeply fissured and covered with a most luxuriant vegetation. We tramped at times waist deep through ferns, some green, some dark red, and some lined with yellow, clumps of the splendid Dipteris Horsfieldi and Matonia pectinala, with their slender stems and wide-spreading palmate fronds towering two feet above our heads. The delicate maidenhair lay like a rich carpet beneath our feet, while hundreds of magnificent climbing pitcher-plants doused us with water as we knocked against them. Our sympiesometer showed us that we were twenty-eight hundred feet above the sea.

Beyond the padang-batu we entered a forest of almost Alpine character, dwarfed and stunted. For several hours we worked along ridges, descended into valleys, and ascended almost precipitous ledges, until we finally reached a peak that was separated from the true mountain by a deep, forbidding canon.

Several of the older men of the party gave out, and we were forced to leave them with half our baggage and what water was left: there was a spring, they told us, near the summit.

The scramble down the one side of the canon, and up the other, was a hard hour's work. Its rocky, almost perpendicular sides were covered with a bushy vegetation on top of a foundation of mosses and dead leaves, so that it afforded us more hindrance than help.

Just below the summit we came to where a projecting rock gave us shelter, and a natural basin contained flowing water. Dropping my load, and hardly waiting to catch my breath, I was on my way up the fifty feet that lay between us and the top. In another moment I had mounted the small, rocky, rhododendron-covered platform, and stood, the first of my party, on the summit of Mount Ophir. The little American flag that I had brought with me I waved frantically above my head, much to the amusement of my attendants.

Four thousand feet below, to the east, stretched the silver sheen of the Indian Ocean. The smoke of a passing steamer lay like a dark stain on the blue and white of the sky. Close into the shore was the little capital town of Bander Maharani, connecting itself with us by a long, snake-like ribbon of shimmering light,--the great river Maur.

To the north and west successive ranges of hill and valley, divided by the glistening river, and all covered by an interminable jungle of vivid green, fell away until lost in the cloudless horizon.

For a moment I stood and gazed out over the vast expanse that lay before me, my mind filled with the wild, unwritten poetry of its jungles and its people; then I turned to my companion.

"It is beautiful!"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"But not equal to the view from our own Mount Washington."

"Then why take so much trouble to secure it? Mount Pulei is as high, and there is a good road to its top."

I laughed. "Mount Pulei or Mount Washington is not Ophir."

"True!" he answered, opening his eyes in surprise at the seeming absurdity of my statement. "He that told you they were speaketh a lie."

We spent the night on the summit, and watched the sun drop into the midst of the sea, away to the west. It was cool and delightful after the moist, heat-laden atmosphere of the lowlands, and a strong breeze freed us from the swarm of tiger mosquitoes that we had learned to expect as the darkness came on.

Where the Ophir of the Bible really is, will ever be a question of doubt. To my mind it embraces the entire East--the Malay Peninsula, Ceylon, India, and even China,--Ophir being merely a comprehensive term, possibly taken from this Mount Ophir of Johore, which signified the most central point of the region to which Solomon's ships sailed. For all ages the gold of the Malay Peninsula has been known; from the earliest times there has been intercourse between the Arabians and the Malays, while the Malayan was the very first of the far Eastern countries to adopt the Mohammedan religion and customs.

All the articles mentioned in the Biblical account of Mount Ophir are found in and about Malacca in abundance, while on the coast of Africa two of them, peacocks and silver, are missing.

If the Hebrew word thukyim is translated peacocks, and not parrots, then Solomon's ships must have turned east after passing the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and not south along the coast of Africa toward Sofala. For peacocks are only found in India and Malaya.

It is a singular fact that in the language of the Orang Bennu, or aborigines of the Malay Peninsula, that word "peacocks," which in the modern Malay is marrak, is in the aboriginal chim marak, which is the exact termination of the Hebrew tuchim. Their word for bird is tchem, another surprising similarity.

The morning sun brought us to our feet long before it was light in the vast spaces beneath our eyes. The jungle held its reddening rays for a moment; they flamed along the course of a half-hidden river; we stood out clear and distinct in their glorious effulgence, and then the broken, denuded crags and ragged ravines of the padang-batu absorbed them in its black fastnesses.

The gold of Mount Ophir was all about us. The air, the stones, the very trees, seemed to have been transformed into the glorious metal that the little fleets of Solomon and Huram sailed so far to seek. The Aurea Chersonese was a breathing, pulsating reality.

[The end]
Rounsevelle Wildman's short story: King Solomon's Mines

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