MICHAEL CRICHTON

all said it had come from the interior, where the ruins of a city called Zinj may befound, and it is here that such diamonds may be found in profusion, scatteredupon the ground and also in riversIn 1334, another Arab, Ibn Mohammed, stated that “our number madearrangements to seek out the city of Zinj, but quitted our quest upon learning thatthe city was long since abandoned, and much ruined. It is said that the aspect ofthe city is wondrous strange, for doors and windows are built in the curve of ahalf-moon, and the residences are now overtaken by a violent race of hairy menwho speak in whispers no known languageThen the Portuguese, those indefatigable explorers, arrived. By 1544, theywere venturing inland from the west coast up the mighty Congo River, but theysoon encountered all the obstacles that would prevent exploration of centralAfrica for hundreds of years to come. The Congo was not navigable beyond thefirst set of rapids, two hundred miles inland (at what was once Léopoldville, andis now Kinshasa). The natives were hostile and cannibalistic. And the hotsteaming jungle was the source of disease—malaria, sleeping sickness,bilharzia, blackwater fever—which decimated foreign intruders.The Portuguese never managed to penetrate the central*The fabled city of Zinj formed the basis for H. Rider Haggard’s popular novelKing Solomon’s Mines, first published in 1885. Haggard, a gifted linguist, hadserved on the staff of the Governor of Natal in 1875. and he presumably heard ofZinj from the neighboring Zulus at that time.Congo. Neither did the English, under Captain Brenner, in 1644; his entireparty was lost. The Congo would remain for two hundred years as a blank spoton the civilized maps of the world.But the early explorers repeated the legends of the interior, including the storyof Zinj. A Portuguese artist, Juan Diego de Valdez, drew a widely acclaimedpicture of the Lost City of Zinj in 1642. “But,” Sarah Johnson said, “he also drewpictures of men with tails, and monkeys having carnal knowledge of nativewomen.”Somebody groaned.“Apparently Valdez was crippled,” she continued. “He lived all his life in thetown of Settibal, drinking with sailors and drawing pictures based on hisconversations.”44