Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle.  Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog,  ClassicKindle.com,  a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

Green Mansions by W. H. Hudson is a 1904 novel. I hope I do not prejudice you against this novel by saying it is about a female Tarzan. Because that is not a pejorative – I liked “Tarzan of the Apes.” And of course this book pre-dates Tarzan.

This is a classic adventure, a tale kept quiet for years and confided at last over after dinner drinks.

These Indians wore necklets, like nearly all the Guayana savages; but one, I observed, possessed a necklet unlike that of the others, which greatly aroused my curiosity. It was made of thirteen gold plates, irregular in form, about as broad as a man’s thumb-nail, and linked together with fibres. I was allowed to examine it, and had no doubt that the pieces were of pure gold, beaten flat by the savages. When questioned about it, they said it was originally obtained from the Indians of Parahuari, and Parahuari, they further said, was a mountainous country west of the Orinoco. Every man and woman in that place, they assured me, had such a necklet. This report inflamed my mind to such a degree that I could not rest by night or day for dreaming golden dreams, and considering how to get to that rich district, unknown to civilized men.

And so he journeys on and makes friends of another tribe:

I began to understand from their looks and the old man’s vague words that their fear of the wood was superstitious. If dangerous creatures had existed there tigers, or camoodis, or solitary murderous savages—they would have said so; but when I pressed them with questions they could only repeat that “something bad” existed in the place, that animals were abundant there because no Indian who valued his life dared venture into it. I replied that unless they gave me some more definite information I should certainly go again and put myself in the way of the danger they feared.

Well, of course he must visit the forbidden area of the rain forest . . .where he discovers a young woman . . .

. . .only her eyes, wide open, with a surprised look in them, remained immovably fixed on my face. And then slowly, imperceptibly—for I did not notice the actual movement, so gradual and smooth it was, like the motion of a cloud of mist which changes its form and place, yet to the eye seems not to have moved—she rose to her knees, to her feet, retired, and with face still towards me, and eyes fixed on mine, finally disappeared, going as if she had melted away into the verdure. The leafage was there occupying the precise spot where she had been a moment before—the feathery foliage of an acacia shrub, and stems and broad, arrow-shaped leaves of an aquatic plant, and slim, drooping fern fronds, and they were motionless and seemed not to have been touched by something passing through them.

Discover for yourself!

Download your free copy of “A Romance of the Tropical Forest” by W. H. Hudson here >>>

Every Friday, Marilyn Knapp Litt, who blogs at ClassicKindle.com, brings us her recommendation of a free classic book to discover (or rediscover) on Kindle.  Find more of Marilyn’s recommendations at her blog,  ClassicKindle.com,  a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the Kindle. You can also get Marilyn’s blog on Kindle and I recommend that you “Like” the Classic Kindle Facebook page as well so you don’t miss anything. Here’s Marilyn’s post:

Visitors to the Field Museum of Chicago have long been fascinated by the stuffed bullet riddled pelts of the two man-eating lions of Tsavo. For years they were our secret, tucked in the back. Then there was a great movie, “The Ghost and the Darkness.” That’s OK, I don’t mind sharing. But before this movie, long before, there was an account by a man who was there. The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and other East African Adventures by John Henry Patterson, 1907. (The lions were killed in 1898.)

Two most voracious and insatiable man-eating lions appeared upon the scene, and for over nine months waged an intermittent warfare against the railway [under construction] and all those connected with it in the vicinity of Tsavo. This culminated in a perfect reign of terror in December, 1898, when they actually succeeded in bringing the railway works to a complete standstill for about three weeks. At first they were not always successful in their efforts to carry off a victim, but as time went on they stopped at nothing and indeed braved any danger in order to obtain their favourite food. Their methods then became so uncanny, and their man-stalking so well-timed and so certain of success, that the workmen firmly believed that they were not real animals at all, but devils in lions’ shape. Many a time the coolies solemnly assured me that it was absolutely useless to attempt to shoot them. They were quite convinced that the angry spirits of two departed native chiefs had taken this form in order to protest against a railway being made through their country, and by stopping its progress to avenge the insult thus shown to them.

I have nothing to add to this. You are either the sort of person who wants to read more about these man-eaters or you are not.

Download your free copy of  The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and other East African Adventures by John Henry Patterson here >>>