A Princess of Mars

To the Reader of this Work:

In submitting Captain Carter's strange manuscript to you in book
form, I believe that a few words relative to this remarkable
personality will be of interest.

My first recollection of Captain Carter is of the few months he
spent at my father's home in Virginia, just prior to the opening of
the civil war. I was then a child of but five years, yet I well
remember the tall, dark, smooth-faced, athletic man whom I called
Uncle Jack.

He seemed always to be laughing; and he entered into the sports
of the children with the same hearty good fellowship he displayed
toward those pastimes in which the men and women of his own age
indulged; or he would sit for an hour at a time entertaining my old
grandmother with stories of his strange, wild life in all parts of
the world. We all loved him, and our slaves fairly worshipped the
ground he trod.

He was a splendid specimen of manhood, standing a good two inches
over six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the
carriage of the trained fighting man. His features were regular
and clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes
were of a steel gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character,
filled with fire and initiative. His manners were perfect, and
his courtliness was that of a typical southern gentleman of the
highest type.

His horsemanship, especially after hounds, was a marvel and delight
even in that country of magnificent horsemen. I have often heard
my father caution him against his wild recklessness, but he would
only laugh, and say that the tumble that killed him would be from
the back of a horse yet unfoaled.

When the war broke out he left us, nor did I see him again for some
fifteen or sixteen years. When he returned it was without warning,
and I was much surprised to note that he had not aged apparently a
moment, nor had he changed in any other outward way. He was, when
others were with him, the same genial, happy fellow we had known of
old, but when he thought himself alone I have seen him sit for
hours gazing off into space, his face set in a look of wistful
longing and hopeless misery; and at night he would sit thus looking
up into the heavens, at what I did not know until I read his
manuscript years afterward.

He told us that he had been prospecting and mining in Arizona part
of the time since the war; and that he had been very successful
was evidenced by the unlimited amount of money with which he was
supplied. As to the details of his life during these years he
was very reticent, in fact he would not talk of them at all.

He remained with us for about a year and then went to New York,
where he purchased a little place on the Hudson, where I visited
him once a year on the occasions of my trips to the New York
market—my father and I owning and operating a string of general
stores throughout Virginia at that time. Captain Carter had a
small but beautiful cottage, situated on a bluff overlooking the
river, and during one of my last visits, in the winter of 1885, I
observed he was much occupied in writing, I presume now, upon this
manuscript.

He told me at this time that if anything should happen to him he
wished me to take charge of his estate, and he gave me a key to a
compartment in the safe which stood in his study, telling me I
would find his will there and some personal instructions which he
had me pledge myself to carry out with absolute fidelity.

After I had retired for the night I have seen him from my window
standing in the moonlight on the brink of the bluff overlooking the
Hudson with his arms stretched out to the heavens as though in
appeal. I thought at the time that he was praying, although I never
understood that he was in the strict sense of the term a religious
man.

Several months after I had returned home from my last visit, the
first of March, 1886, I think, I received a telegram from him asking
me to come to him at once. I had always been his favorite among the
younger generation of Carters and so I hastened to comply with his
demand.

I arrived at the little station, about a mile from his grounds, on
the morning of March 4, 1886, and when I asked the livery man to
drive me out to Captain Carter's he replied that if I was a friend
of the Captain's he had some very bad news for me; the Captain had
been found dead shortly after daylight that very morning by the
watchman attached to an adjoining property.

For some reason this news did not surprise me, but I hurried out to
his place as quickly as possible, so that I could take charge of the
body and of his affairs.

I found the watchman who had discovered him, together with the local
police chief and several townspeople, assembled in his little study.
The watchman related the few details connected with the finding of
the body, which he said had been still warm when he came upon it.
It lay, he said, stretched full length in the snow with the arms
outstretched above the head toward the edge of the bluff, and when
he showed me the spot it flashed upon me that it was the identical
one where I had seen him on those other nights, with his arms
raised in supplication to the skies.

There were no marks of violence on the body, and with the aid of a
local physician the coroner's jury quickly reached a decision of
death from heart failure. Left alone in the study, I opened the
safe and withdrew the contents of the drawer in which he had told
me I would find my instructions. They were in part peculiar
indeed, but I have followed them to each last detail as faithfully
as I was able.

He directed that I remove his body to Virginia without embalming,
and that he be laid in an open coffin within a tomb which he
previously had had constructed and which, as I later learned, was
well ventilated. The instructions impressed upon me that I must
personally see that this was carried out just as he directed,
even in secrecy if necessary.

His property was left in such a way that I was to receive the
entire income for twenty-five years, when the principal was to
become mine. His further instructions related to this manuscript
which I was to retain sealed and unread, just as I found it, for
eleven years; nor was I to divulge its contents until twenty-one
years after his death.

A strange feature about the tomb, where his body still lies, is
that the massive door is equipped with a single, huge gold-plated
spring lock which can be opened
only from the inside
.

Yours very sincerely,

Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a
hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged
as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can
recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty. I appear
today as I did forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I
cannot go on living forever; that some day I shall die the real
death from which there is no resurrection. I do not know why I
should fear death, I who have died twice and am still alive; but yet
I have the same horror of it as you who have never died, and it is
because of this terror of death, I believe, that I am so convinced
of my mortality.

And because of this conviction I have determined to write down the
story of the interesting periods of my life and of my death. I
cannot explain the phenomena; I can only set down here in the words
of an ordinary soldier of fortune a chronicle of the strange events
that befell me during the ten years that my dead body lay
undiscovered in an Arizona cave.

I have never told this story, nor shall mortal man see this
manuscript until after I have passed over for eternity. I know that
the average human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and so
I do not purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and the
press, and held up as a colossal liar when I am but telling the
simple truths which some day science will substantiate. Possibly
the suggestions which I gained upon Mars, and the knowledge which I
can set down in this chronicle, will aid in an earlier understanding
of the mysteries of our sister planet; mysteries to you, but no
longer mysteries to me.

My name is John Carter; I am better known as Captain Jack Carter of
Virginia. At the close of the Civil War I found myself possessed
of several hundred thousand dollars (Confederate) and a captain's
commission in the cavalry arm of an army which no longer existed;
the servant of a state which had vanished with the hopes of the
South. Masterless, penniless, and with my only means of livelihood,
fighting, gone, I determined to work my way to the southwest and
attempt to retrieve my fallen fortunes in a search for gold.

I spent nearly a year prospecting in company with another
Confederate officer, Captain James K. Powell of Richmond. We
were extremely fortunate, for late in the winter of 1865, after
many hardships and privations, we located the most remarkable
gold-bearing quartz vein that our wildest dreams had ever pictured.
Powell, who was a mining engineer by education, stated that we had
uncovered over a million dollars worth of ore in a trifle over three
months.

As our equipment was crude in the extreme we decided that one of us
must return to civilization, purchase the necessary machinery and
return with a sufficient force of men properly to work the mine.

As Powell was familiar with the country, as well as with the
mechanical requirements of mining we determined that it would be
best for him to make the trip. It was agreed that I was to hold
down our claim against the remote possibility of its being jumped
by some wandering prospector.

On March 3, 1866, Powell and I packed his provisions on two of our
burros, and bidding me good-bye he mounted his horse, and started
down the mountainside toward the valley, across which led the first
stage of his journey.