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The Ivory Trail
Talbot Mundy (1879-1940), born William Lancaster Gribbon, was an English writer. He also wrote under the pseudonym Walter Galt. His most famous book is "King-of the Khyber Rifles," which is set in India under British Occupation.
417 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1917
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About the author
Talbot Mundy
464 books55 followersTalbot Mundy (born William Lancaster Gribbon) was an English-born American writer of adventure fiction. Based for most of his life in the United States, he also wrote under the pseudonym of Walter Galt. Best known as the author of King of the Khyber Rifles and the Jimgrim series, much of his work was published in pulp magazines.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 29, 2018
The best African adventure story I have ever read.
Four disparate adventures led by the urbane Lord 'Monty' Montdidier are holed-up in quarantine at Zanzibar where they hear about the buried ivory horde of Tippoo Tib and head to the Congo to find it:
"It's better than all King Solomon's mines, El Dorado, Golconda, and Sindbad the Sailor's treasure lands—rolled in one!"
As you would expect with such a legendary horde of white gold, there are other interested parties. The German government are represented by Schillingschen, an archaeologist and Prussian brute of the basest kind. He really is an indomitable swine, I assure you!
A touch of degraded class is also on the scene in the person of Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon, a domineering British traitress who takes ready advantage of the gallant natures of the British and American adventurers.
Their footsteps are also dogged by Coutlass, a garralous Greek rogue 'who claimed three countries and disgraced each one at intervals in turn.' His shameless antics are a constant delight.
That's just the imported hardships they come up against. There are also the indigenous concerns, such as lions, leopards, crocodiles, hippos, mosquitoes, tetse flies and other ingratiating horrors of the insect kingdom ['we all had chiggers in our feet—the minute fleas that haunt the dust of native villages and insert themselves under toe-nails to grow great and lay their eggs. (Nearly every native in the village had more than one toe missing)'] And did I mention not one but two tribes of cannibals?
Having read a couple of stories by Munday before I already knew that amongst his contemporaries he had a refreshingly respectful regard for the East, and the same can be said for Africa. The German imperialists are very much the bad guys here, the British imperfect yet preferable colonists:
'Africa whose past is gloom, whose present is twilight and uncertainty, but whose future under the rule of humane men is immeasurable, unimaginable.'
His descriptions of the unexplored African jungle were so swelteringly realistic that I felt like I needed a shower between chapters. The poems prefacing each one were as good as the prose. I also enjoyed learning a few choice Swahili phrases along the way:
Sijui, I don't know: the most aggravating word In Africa, except perhaps bado kidogo, which means "presently," "bye and bye," "in a little while."
Compared to Kipling, Talbot Munday takes the cake.
Four disparate adventures led by the urbane Lord 'Monty' Montdidier are holed-up in quarantine at Zanzibar where they hear about the buried ivory horde of Tippoo Tib and head to the Congo to find it:
"It's better than all King Solomon's mines, El Dorado, Golconda, and Sindbad the Sailor's treasure lands—rolled in one!"
As you would expect with such a legendary horde of white gold, there are other interested parties. The German government are represented by Schillingschen, an archaeologist and Prussian brute of the basest kind. He really is an indomitable swine, I assure you!
A touch of degraded class is also on the scene in the person of Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon, a domineering British traitress who takes ready advantage of the gallant natures of the British and American adventurers.
Their footsteps are also dogged by Coutlass, a garralous Greek rogue 'who claimed three countries and disgraced each one at intervals in turn.' His shameless antics are a constant delight.
That's just the imported hardships they come up against. There are also the indigenous concerns, such as lions, leopards, crocodiles, hippos, mosquitoes, tetse flies and other ingratiating horrors of the insect kingdom ['we all had chiggers in our feet—the minute fleas that haunt the dust of native villages and insert themselves under toe-nails to grow great and lay their eggs. (Nearly every native in the village had more than one toe missing)'] And did I mention not one but two tribes of cannibals?
Having read a couple of stories by Munday before I already knew that amongst his contemporaries he had a refreshingly respectful regard for the East, and the same can be said for Africa. The German imperialists are very much the bad guys here, the British imperfect yet preferable colonists:
'Africa whose past is gloom, whose present is twilight and uncertainty, but whose future under the rule of humane men is immeasurable, unimaginable.'
His descriptions of the unexplored African jungle were so swelteringly realistic that I felt like I needed a shower between chapters. The poems prefacing each one were as good as the prose. I also enjoyed learning a few choice Swahili phrases along the way:
Sijui, I don't know: the most aggravating word In Africa, except perhaps bado kidogo, which means "presently," "bye and bye," "in a little while."
Compared to Kipling, Talbot Munday takes the cake.
May 8, 2019
These earlier works of Mundry make for some of his best books, I think. Clearly he is influenced by his greater contemporaries, Haggard and Kipling. In an earlier set of stories brought to book form under the title, Told in the East, Mundy's guide seemed to be Kipling. But in The Ivory Trail, the influence of Haggard is paramount. And it's not just that Told in the East was, as with Kipling's tales, India centered in its stories, while Ivory Trail is set in Africa, the site of so many of Haggard's novels. The former book is also devoted to military deeds, military men, and questions of honor, duty, and a sidelong look every now and then at things amiss in the Empire. But with Ivory Trail's epic plot covering almost all East Africa, British, Portuguese, and German, and relating the adventures of explorers, hunters, and adventurers, the book has strong echoes of Haggard's Alan Quatermain.
The style, here, is realistic, however, with nothing resembling the later philosophically inclined adventure stories Mundy wrote or the even later novels outfitted in the subtleties of Mundy's notions about Theosophy. Too, Mundy creates one of his greatest villains, Schillingschen, the German professor and agent bent on fomenting rebellion among the inhabitants of British East Africa.
One more thing becomes clear in this early Mundy novel. With its climax taking place on Uganda's Mt. Eglon, it suddenly hit me that almost all of Mundy's work that I've read (and I've read a lot at this point) takes the action and/or the resolution of events to mountains or high ground. Even his forest/jungle stories with Ommony move to action climaxes on rocky outcroppings or elevated hills and nearby mountains. Not to mention all the tales of Ommony, Ramsden, Jimgrin, King, and Singh that take place in the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush, or the mountains of the North West Frontier. From a very early moment, it appears, Mundy understood that emotional drama and action was reinforced through the use of geographic atmosphere that was equally as dramatic and varied.
The style, here, is realistic, however, with nothing resembling the later philosophically inclined adventure stories Mundy wrote or the even later novels outfitted in the subtleties of Mundy's notions about Theosophy. Too, Mundy creates one of his greatest villains, Schillingschen, the German professor and agent bent on fomenting rebellion among the inhabitants of British East Africa.
One more thing becomes clear in this early Mundy novel. With its climax taking place on Uganda's Mt. Eglon, it suddenly hit me that almost all of Mundy's work that I've read (and I've read a lot at this point) takes the action and/or the resolution of events to mountains or high ground. Even his forest/jungle stories with Ommony move to action climaxes on rocky outcroppings or elevated hills and nearby mountains. Not to mention all the tales of Ommony, Ramsden, Jimgrin, King, and Singh that take place in the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush, or the mountains of the North West Frontier. From a very early moment, it appears, Mundy understood that emotional drama and action was reinforced through the use of geographic atmosphere that was equally as dramatic and varied.
February 6, 2019
Eh, more like a 2.5. It gets awfully repetitive in spots, and as a result it was super hard for me to finish it. Giving the time period it was written, the treatment of the native peoples is actually quite kind and surprised me so that's why I rounded it up.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews