Before there was Indiana Jones there was Allan Quartermain: the original explorer, treasure hunter, and adventurer. The Ivory Child is a novel by H. Rider Haggard featuring Allan Quatermain.

"Now I, Allan Quatermain, come to the story of what was, perhaps, one of the strangest of all the adventures which have befallen me in the course of a life that so far can scarcely be called tame or humdrum. Amongst many other things it tells of the war against the Black Kendah people and the dead of Jana, their elephant god. Often since then I have wondered if this creature was or was not anything more than a mere gigantic beast of the forest. It seems improbable, even impossible, but the reader of future days may judge of this matter for himself. Also he can form his opinion as to the religion of the White Kendah and their pretensions to a certain degree of magical skill. Of this magic I will make only one remark: If it existed at all, it was by no means infallible. To take a single instance, Harût and Marût were convinced by divination that I, and I only, could kill Jana, which was why they invited me to Kendahland. Yet in the end it was Hans who killed him. Jana nearly killed me! Now to my tale."  And so it begins...

"Rider Haggard is one of those imaginative writers who undoubtedly feed from many streams...Perhaps only when our scientific explorers and investigators stumble upon the truths revealed through imagination will we recognize the true stature of such a writer."  -- Henry Miller

"...Rider Haggard, perhaps the greatest of all who enchanted us when we were young...Enchantment is just what this writer exercised..."  - Graham Greene

"Never was a better tale teller or, to my mind, a man with a more convincing imagination."  -- Rudyard Kipling

"...Pages of poetry and eloquence."  -- Robert Louis Stevenson

Used - Very good, with dust jacket

First published, 1916; this is the British 1958 edition.  274 pages.  7-/12 x 5 x 7/8" Hardback