A Princess of Mars

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.