Henry Rider was a British Victorian writer known for his adventure novels set is exotic places. His writings are sympathetic to the natives. He often portrayed Africans as heroic in his stories even though the main characters are usually European. This lost race novel begins as an exciting African adventure. Leonard Outram is a British adventurer who is in Africa seeking his fortune. He becomes part of the rescue of a Portuguese woman from a large slave camp. Leonard, his companion Otter and the girl set off and find the people of the mist. They then impersonate gods and priests with the hope of getting the people's hoard of jewels.
Author's Note
On several previous occasions it has happened to this writer of romance to be justified of his romances by facts of startling similarity, subsequently brought to light and to his knowledge. In this tale occurs an instance of the sort, a "double-barrelled" instance indeed, that to him seems sufficiently curious to be worthy of telling. The People of the Mist of his adventure story worship a sacred crocodile to which they make sacrifice, but in the original draft of the book this crocodile was a snake - monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens.
A friend of the writer, an African explorer of great experience who read that draft, suggested that the snake was altogether too unprecedented and impossible. Accordingly, also at his suggestion, a crocodile was substituted. Scarcely was this change effected, however, when Mr. R. T. Coryndon, the slayer of almost the last white rhinoceros, published in the African Review of February 17, 1894, an account of a huge and terrific serpent said to exist in the Dichwi district of Mashonaland, that in many particulars resembled the snake of the story, whose prototype, by the way, really lives and is adored as a divinity by certain natives in the remote province of Chiapas in Mexico. Still, the tale being in type, the alteration was suffered to stand. But now, if the Zoutpansberg Review may be believed, the author can take credit for his crocodile also, since that paper states that in the course of the recent campaign against Malaboch, a chief living in the north of the Transvaal, his fetish or god was captured, and that god, a crocodile fashioned in wood, to which offerings were made. Further, this journal says that among these people (as with the ancient Egyptians), the worship of the crocodile is a recognised cult. Also it congratulates the present writer on his intimate acquaintance with the more secret manifestations of African folklore and beast worship. He must disclaim the compliment in this instance as, when engaged in inventing the 'People of the Mist,' he was totally ignorant that any of the Bantu tribes reverenced either snake or crocodile divinities. But the coincidence is strange, and once more shows, if further examples of the fact are needed, how impotent are the efforts of imagination to vie with hidden truths - even with the hidden truths of this small and trodden world.
September 20, 1894.
Author's Note
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Chapter 1 The Sins of the Father are Visited on the Children
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Chapter 2 The Swearing of the Oath
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Chapter 3 After Seven Years
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Chapter 4 The Last Vigil
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Chapter 5 Otter Gives Counsel
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Chapter 6 The Tale of Soa
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Chapter 7 Leonard Swears on the Blood of Aca
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Chapter 8 The Start
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Chapter 9 The Yellow Devil's Nest
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Chapter 10 Leonard Makes a Plan
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Chapter 11 That Hero Otter
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Chapter 12 A Choice Lot
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Chapter 13 A Midnight Marriage
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Chapter 14 Vengeance
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Chapter 15 Disillusion
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Chapter 16 Misunderstandings
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Chapter 17 The Death of Mavoom
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Chapter 18 Soa Shows Her Teeth
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Chapter 19 The End of the Journey
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Chapter 20 The Coming of Aca
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Chapter 21 The Folly of Otter
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Chapter 22 The Temple of Jal
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Chapter 23 How Juanna Conquered Nam
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Chapter 24 Olfan Tells of the Rubies
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Chapter 25 The Sacrifice after the New Order
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Chapter 26 The Last of the Settlement Men
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Chapter 27 Father and Daughter
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Chapter 28 Juanna Prevaricates
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Chapter 29 The Trial of the Gods
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Chapter 30 Francisco's Expiation
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Chapter 31 The White Dawn
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Chapter 32 How Otter Fought the Water Dweller
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Chapter 33 Trapped
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Chapter 34 Nam's Last Argument
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Chapter 35 Be Noble or be Base
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Chapter 36 How Otter Came Back
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Chapter 37 "I Am Repaid, Queen"
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Chapter 38 The Triumph of Nam
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Chapter 39 The Passing of the Bridge
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