Allan Quatermain series
This faithful but unpretending record of a remarkable adventure is hereby respectfully dedicated by the narrator, ALLAN QUATERMAIN, to all the big and little boys who read it.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The author ventures to take this opportunity to thank his readers for the kind reception they have accorded to the successive editions of this tale during the last twelve years. He hopes that in its present form it will fall into the hands of an even wider
...It may be well to state that the incident of the Thing that bites recorded in this tale is not an effort of the imagination. On the contrary, it is plagiarized. Mandara, a well-known chief on the east coast of Africa, has such an article, and uses it. In the same way the wicked conduct attributed to Wambe is not without a precedent. T'Chaka, the Zulu Napoleon, never allowed a child of his to live.
8) Finished
Ditchingham House, Norfolk, May, 1917.
My dear Roosevelt, -
You are, I know, a lover of old Allan Quatermain, one who understands and appreciates the views of life and the aspirations that underlie and inform his manifold adventures.
Therefore, since such is your kind wish, in memory of certain hours wherein both of us found true refreshment and companionship amidst the terrible anxieties of the World's journey along that bloodstained