H. Rider Haggard · 1887 · overland

H. Rider Haggard's 1887 sequel to King Solomon's Mines. His son dead and England unbearable, Quatermain goes back to Africa with Curtis, Good and the Zulu Umslopogaas, on a rumour of a white civilisation beyond Mount Kenia. They fight their way up the Tana, are carried underground by a river, and come out in a kingdom that promptly has a civil war over one of them.

1. 1
   Zanzibar

   Quatermain, unable to settle in England after his son's death, reassembles the old party and sails for the east African coast - on nothing better than a missionary's letter mentioning a mysterious white people in the interior.

2. 2
   Lamu

   They choose Lamu over Mombasa as their starting point on a German trader's advice, disembark at the consul's house, and hire Wakwafi askari - Haggard describing the fever, the squalor and the coast trade with unusual precision.

3. 3
   The Tana River

   Up the Tana by boat and on foot toward the interior, and at the Scottish missionary Mackenzie's station they are attacked by a Masai party at night - the set-piece that made the book's reputation.

4. 4
   Mount Kenia

   Beyond Mount Kenia they take a subterranean river by canoe, in the dark, for days - the passage that turns the novel from an African expedition into something closer to a myth.

5. 5
   Zu-Vendis

   They surface on the sacred lake of Zu-Vendis, a kingdom the size of France ruled by two sisters who both fall for Curtis - and the civil war that follows ends with Umslopogaas holding a staircase alone against an army.