Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
By Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tarzan returns to Opar, the source of the gold where a lost colony of the fabled Atlantis is located, to make good on some of the financial reverses he has recently suffered. While Atlantis itself sank beneath the waves thousands of years ago, the workers of Opar continued to mine all of the gold, which means there is a rather colossal stockpile. However, the stockpile is now lost to the memory of the Oparians, and only Tarzan knows its secret location.
A greedy, outlawed Belgian army officer, Albert Werper, in the employ of a criminal Arab, secretly follows Tarzan to Opar. There, Tarzan loses his memory after being struck on the head by a falling rock in the treasure room during an earthquake. On encountering La, the high priestess who is the servant of the Flaming God of Opar and who is also very beautiful, Tarzan once again rejects her love, which enrages her, and she tries to have him killed; she had fallen in love with the apeman during their first encounter, and La and her high priests are not going to allow Tarzan to escape their sacrificial knives this time.
In the meantime, Jane has been kidnapped by the Arab and wonders what is keeping her husband from once again coming to her rescue. A now-amnesiac Tarzan and Werper escape from Opar, bearing away Opar’s sacrificial knife, which La and some retainers set out to recover. There is intrigue and counter-intrigue the rest of the way.
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Edgar Rice Burroughs
Burroughs was born on September 1, 1875, in Chicago (he later lived for many years in the suburb of Oak Park), the fourth son of Major George Tyler Burroughs (1833–1913), a businessman and Civil War veteran, and his wife, Mary Evaline (Zieger) Burroughs (1840–1920).
Biography.
His middle name is from his paternal grandmother, Mary Coleman Rice Burroughs (1802–1889). Burroughs was almost entirely of English ancestry, with a family line in North America since the Colonial era. Through his Rice grandmother, Burroughs descended from settler Edmund Rice, one of the English Puritans who moved to Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early 17th century. He remarked, “I can trace my ancestry back to Deacon Edmund Rice.”
The Burroughs side of the family was also of English origin, having emigrated to Massachusetts around the same time. Many of his ancestors fought in the American Revolution. Some of his ancestors settled in Virginia during the colonial period, and Burroughs often emphasized his connection with that side of his family, seeing it as romantic and warlike. As close cousins, he had seven signatories of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, including his third cousin, who was four times removed, and the 2nd President of the United States, John Adams. Burroughs was educated at several local schools.
He then attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and the Michigan Military Academy. Graduating in 1895 but failing the United States Military Academy entrance exam at West Point, he became an enlisted soldier with the 7th U.S. Cavalry in Fort Grant, Arizona Territory. After being diagnosed with a heart problem and thus ineligible to serve, he was discharged in 1897.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
