Publisher's Synopsis
I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred, possibly more; but Icannot tell because I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as Ican recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty. I appear today as I did forty years andmore ago, and yet I feel that I cannot go on living forever; that some day I shall die the real deathfrom which there is no resurrection. I do not know why I should fear death, I who have died twiceand am still alive; but yet I have the same horror of it as you who have never died, and it is becauseof 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 interestingperiods of my life and of my death. I cannot explain the phenomena; I can only set down here in thewords of an ordinary soldier of fortune a chronicle of the strange events that befell me during theten 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 passedover for eternity. I know that the average human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and so Ido not purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and the press, and held up as a colossal liarwhen I am but telling the simple truths which some day science will substantiate. Possibly thesuggestions 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 nolonger mysteries to me.My name is John Carter; I am better known as Captain Jack Carter of Virginia. At the close ofthe Civil War I found myself possessed of several hundred thousand dollars (Confederate) and acaptain's commission in the cavalry arm of an army which no longer existed; the servant of a statewhich had vanished with the hopes of the South. Masterless, penniless, and with my only means oflivelihood, fighting, gone, I determined to work my way to the southwest and attempt to retrieve myfallen fortunes in a search for gold.I spent nearly a year prospecting in company with another Confederate officer, Captain JamesK. Powell of Richmond. We were extremely fortunate, for late in the winter of 1865, after manyhardships and privations, we located the most remarkable gold-bearing quartz vein that our wildestdreams had ever pictured. Powell, who was a mining engineer by education, stated that we haduncovered over a million dollars worth of ore in a trifle over three months
