King Solomon's Mines clearly expresses certain racial prejudices that were dominant attitudes in Haggard's own time. The fact that, like his creator, Quatermain admires and respects black Africans does not obscure his belief that blacks and whites must remain separate. Indeed, these very sentiments are spoken more often by the blacks in the story than by the whites. However, though the novel does not envision true equality or unity among blacks and whites, it is important to note that Haggard's work does affirm—very strongly, in fact—a sense of noble values inherent in both races. Though culturally different, both races possess people of honor and goodness just as both possess people of treachery and evil.

Haggard's view that blacks and whites could inhabit the same moral world was more progressive than the views of many of his contemporaries, who believed that all native...