The Mysterious Gordon: Jongor

By Dennis E. Power

 

 

 

 

In 1999, I sought to understand why the film version of Wild, Wild West was so different from the television series I had enjoyed as a child. The research I uncovered was examined in “The Wold Wold West”.  It revealed the connection between the two James Wests and uncovered a familial relationship between the two Artemus Gordons. The original Artemus Gordon, that is the television version, was related to the Wold Newton family. His uncanny ability at disguise was shared by at least two relatives, his direct ancestor Henry Burlingame[1] and Sir Percy Blakeney[2] who was a distant cousin.

 

After “The Wold Wold West” had been out for a while fellow Wold Newton researcher Mark Brown published “The Magnificent Gordons” a genealogical essay which expanded upon my researches into the Gordon family. Brown discovered that Flash Gordon, Commissioner James Gordon and his daughter Barbara, Francis X. Gordon (El Borak), Steven Rogers, Buck Rogers, Charlie Gordon, and John Gordon also known as Jongor were also members of the Wold Newton Gordons.

 

What Mark Brown did not know at the time he published his findings was that an unpublished fragment from the original edition of Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life also included Jongor but had a different ancestry than the one that Mark Brown had published. This fragment was discovered in Philip Jose Farmer’s filing cabinet in 2007 and was published in Farmerphile No, 12, April 2008, accompanied by an explanatory essay written by Win Scott Eckert under the title of “Jongor in the Wold Newton Family” by Philip Jose Farmer.

 

In Mark Brown’s genealogy Jongor’s mother is Margaret Dundee, a relation no doubt to Mick Dundee[3], and his father is Robert Gordon. Robert is the son of Clifford Gordon, who ultimately traced his lineage back through Artemus Gordon[4], and further up through Charles Gordon and Antonia Drummond. Antonia Drummond was the daughter of Sir Hugh Drummond and Georgia Dewhurst, two people who had been present at the Wold Newton event. [5]

 

The fragment found in Philip Jose Farmer’s filing cabinet shows a different lineage. In this Jongor’s father was Robert Gordon who was married to Elizabeth Rivers.  This Robert Gordon was from the same branch of the family from which George Gordon, Lord Byron had originated. Jongor’s grandmother had been Delhi Darcy, the grand daughter of Fitzwilliam Darcy and William Bennett, who were also present at the Wold Newton event. According to Farmer Robert Gordon was also related to Rob Roy, Young Lochinvar, and perhaps distantly to Farmer himself. In Farmer’s genealogy, Jongor also had Wold Newton descent through his mother’s side of the family. Elizabeth Rivers was the daughter of Patrick Rivers and Nyad Drummond. Nyad Drummond was the daughter of John Drummond and Oread Butler. John Drummond was the son of Sir Hugh Drummond and Georgia Dewhurst.[6]

 

Shortly after this fragment was discovered I set about researching why Jongor had two lineages credited to him, and possibly to resolve the problem.

 

In both presentations of the lineage Jongor’s father was named Robert Gordon and in both Jongor was descended from Sir Hugh Drummond and Georgia Dewhurst, although Brown has this descent through their daughter Antonia and Farmer through their son John.

 

Of course both cannot be correct, so which is the right descent? Ultimately, I think we must bow to the scholarship of the man who discovered the Wold Newton family tree and categorically state that Philip Jose Farmer’s lineage is the right one.

 

Although Mark Brown’s suppositions were incorrect they were not entirely wrong.  In fact, Mark Brown was very close to the truth, Margaret Dundee was Jongor’s mother; but not his biological mother. She was his stepmother.

 

As Mark Brown had discovered, Robert Gordon, the son of Clifford Gordon was an American pilot stationed in England during the First World War. He met Margaret Dundee an Australian nurse, also stationed in England.[7] They married and went to visit her parents in Australia. Shortly after their arrival in Australia Margaret and Robert Gordon discovered that their stay would be a bit longer than they anticipated because Margaret was pregnant. Her parents insisted that she stay until after the baby was born.

 

As her pregnancy developed the pandemic called the Spanish Flu swept across the world. When her parents contracted the flu and quickly perished from it Margaret volunteered at the local hospital. Even while in the late stages of pregnancy, she helped out as much as she could. The hospital turned into her second home after Robert came down with the flu.[8]

 

While Robert lay sick in the hospital he and Margaret were visited by another Robert Gordon. There had been a bit of confusion when this Robert Gordon had tried to check his flu stricken wife into the hospital. The front desk had insisted that Mr. Robert Gordon was already a patient. It had taken a while for the harried staff to understand that the patient in question was Mrs. Robert Gordon, not Mr. Robert Gordon.

 

This mix up had intrigued this Robert Gordon enough to look up the other Robert Gordon. Although they did not know how they were related they could see enough family resemblance to know that they were related. The visit was rather short since “cousin” Robert had to check on his wife.

 

Both Margaret’s husband Robert Gordon, and “cousin” Robert’s wife, Elizabeth Rivers Gordon carried Wold Newton genes. However in this case their superior genes were more of a curse than a benefit. Most people who experienced the same degree of illness as Robert Gordon or Elizabeth Rivers succumbed to this strain of influenza in a day or so, however both Robert and Elizabeth lingered for weeks as their bodies fought the virulent infection. Ultimately however both succumbed to the virus, although they suffered greatly as the disease ran its course.

 

Margaret gave birth to her son John during Robert’s final illness and was still weak from child birth when Robert’s condition worsened. Robert died never seeing his son. This blow devastated Margaret but when her baby son John developed the flu and quickly succumbed to it, the blow was almost too much to bear. In a short time she had lost her parents, her husband and her infant son.

 

However there were hundreds of people who still needed medical help so she flung herself into nursing duties, determined to see this pestilence defeated. Elizabeth Rivers Gordon was among the patients she cared for. Cousin Robert and his child visited Elizabeth as often as they could. Elizabeth had given birth to their son, also named John, only days before coming down with the flu. Like his father, little John seemed to be resistant to the disease.

 

Margaret formed a close bond with baby John and offered to wet nurse him while Elizabeth was ill. As Margaret cared for baby John she also formed a close friendship with Robert Gordon and with the gravely ill Elizabeth Gordon. This last friendship was all too brief for Elizabeth succumbed to the Spanish flu in four week’s time. In his genealogy for Jongor Philip Jose Farmer notes that Elizabeth Rivers died in 1931. In this however I am afraid I will have to say, to my regret, that he was in error. Farmer believed that Elizabeth Rivers was the woman who perished with Robert Gordon in the Lost Land because he was unaware of Robert Gordon’s second marriage.

 

Margaret and cousin Robert gravitated towards each other as they consoled themselves over the loss of their respective spouses. Caring for baby John helped Margaret survive the loss of her own infant. Little John Gordon needed a mother and Margaret needed a child so Margaret and Cousin Robert wed two months after Elizabeth passed away. As the epidemic lifted, Robert and Margaret decided to leave their tragic past behind and explore Australia’s harsh wilderness by plane, visiting some of her distant relatives in the outback.

 

According to published accounts as they flew over an uncharted mountainous section of Australia they were caught in a storm and were forced down.  Robert crash landed the plane in what we now know is the Lost Land. We do not know much about their lives in this region except that they survived for twelve years until Margaret and Robert were killed by teros, a species of pterodactyl which thrived in the Lost Land.

 

  

 

A pulp writer named Robert Moore Williams wrote a three volume series about Jongor, John Gordon. Jongor was a nickname that he acquired as a toddler when he was unable to say John Gordon. Although the short novels can be read singly the trilogy depicts events which happen in close sequential order shortly after Jongor’s meeting of Ann Hunter who is searching for her brother. Eventually they find her brother and all three undergo a series of adventures as they seek to escape the Lost Land. Although published over the course of several years the three books only cover a period of several weeks.  The chronicle of Jongor by Robert Moore Williams is not a very accurate or reliable account. Williams based his fiction on second hand reports and on a brief interview given by Alan and Ann Hunter upon Alan’s return to America after being lost in Australia for two years.[9]

 

The story that unfolded in the three books is as follows. Alan Hunter a rich young American disappeared while exploring Australia. His guide, Richard Varsey, however made it back to civilization to tell his twin sister about Alan. She hired him to guide her back to the spot where Alan disappeared. Oddly enough Varsey also insisted on hiring Hofer, a guide that knows Australia better than he does. In addition to being a guide, Hofer is a linguist, a geologist and something of a scientist.

 

As they entered the Lost Land they were warned away by a mysterious voice. This voice tells their native bearers to attack them. At least this was Hofer’s translation of the voice which was in a foreign tongue. Instead of chasing them away from the mountain range, the natives chase them further into the Lost Land. Once inside Ann and her party were attacked by pterodactyls. They also spotted a tall, half naked white man. Upon seeing him Varsey took a shot at him.

 

Despite this Jongor helped them against the teros or pterodactyls. In addition to pterodactyls, the Lost Land also had a swamp dinosaur with a long snaky neck. This rather sketchy description matches the 1940’s depiction of the dinosaur then known as a brontosaurus. It was believed to be a swamp dweller due to its vast weight. One Apatosaurus is Jongor’s pet. Jongor agreed to help Ann search for her lost brother. Jongor had a strange crystal amulet through which he can control the apatosaur but he does not control the teros. This may have been biological since pterodactyls were not dinosaurs but rather were reptilian or it could have been psychological since Jongor did not want to have anything to do with monsters that killed his parents.

 

Shortly after Jongor joined the party they were attacked by whirlwinds. Attacked is the correct word since the whirlwinds were specifically created to seek out and destroy them. Jongor claimed that the Murtos[10] could control the weather and cause earthquakes. Varsey argues that perhaps Jongor is controlling the weather with his crystal. Ann begins to doubt Jongor so he leaves the party. Ann and her party were set upon by men from an airship. The men are hairy, simian looking and have prehensile tails. These are the Murtos. Williams described them as being the decadent offspring of the Murians who had created the Lost Land and had brought the dinosaurs to this valley a hundred thousand years before.

 

The Murtos lived in a large, decrepit city. They worship the shining god, the sun. They planned to sacrifice Ann to the Shining God.

 

Hofer, the same scientist who stated that the Murians had brought the dinosaurs to the Lost Valley thousands of years ago, also said that these tailed monkey-men represented the missing link between man and ape. This scientist apparently did not realize that apes do not have tails.

 

Jongor rescued Ann just before she was to be sacrificed. As they fled from the Murtos, they discovered her brother Alan whose imprisonment by the Murtos had left him a shell of a man.

 

At this point is revealed that Jongor had known all along that Alan Hunter was in the Lost Land.  Hunter had found a lost city over a jewel mine. He showed a collection of gems to Varsey. Varsey then shot Hunter, who threw the jewels into a ravine. Varsey left Hunter for dead. Jongor had nursed Alan Hunter back to health. Varsey knew Jongor had rescued Hunter. This is why Varsey had shot at Jongor when he first saw him. Varsey told a web of lies to get Ann to fund another expedition. Hunter also revealed that Hofer had also been one of his guides, only he had an agenda. Hofer was an anarchist who wanted to use the advanced science in the Lost Land to further his political aims.

 

Meanwhile Hofer and Varsey had discovered an ancient tower that generated and controlled tornados. Hofer killed Varsey. He intended to use the tornados to wipe out all life in the Lost Land so he could freely plunder its mineral wealth. Also being an Anarchist, he wanted to use the weapons to destroy all of the governments of the Earth. Jongor caused a stampede of dinosaurs to knock down the tower. Hofer survived the tower’s destruction and shot his rifle at Jongor. Jongor killed Hofer using his bow and arrow.

 

 

After killing Hofer Jongor started to guide Alan and Ann out of the Lost Land. As they were drinking from a pool of water it turned black and flashes of light played across the surface. This Jongor told them was the water writing of the Arklans. Queen Nesca had sent him a message. Whenever she wanted to communicate with someone in this manner she went to the temple of the water god and sent a message. The next time that person was near water the message would show up on the water’s surface.

 

Just as he was about to tell them about the message, Jongor heard a noise he said was blackfellas, the term for Australian Aborigines. He went off to investigate. While he was gone a group of aborigines captured Ann and Allan. They had also captured two other white men. Jongor rescued all four. The other two men are Morton and Schiller.

 

Jongor tells Ann that he has to answer Queen Nesca’s summons. She had rescued him from the teros after his parents had been killed. She had taken him to the city of the Arklans and taught him. However Ann is jealous that Jongor is so ready to answer the Queen’s summons.

 

Alan also tried to talk him out of turning back since they needed him to get across the desert outside of the Lost Land.

 

Not too distant from where Jongor and his party rested from their escape were a party of Murtos and one of the Arklans. The Arklans were centaurs, created in the laboratories of the Murians thousands of years before. The Arklan Mozdoc was the one who had sent Jongor the water message. He had done so at the bidding of the Murtos who paid him in diamonds.[11]

 

Orbo, the leader of the Murtos reveals that he had a crystal similar to Jongor. This one had been used to control slaves. He used it to plant thoughts into the mind of Ann Hunter.  She left the camp and was captured by the Murtos. Jongor and Alan trailed after her. On her own Ann escaped from the Murtos but encountered some lions who gave her chase. She was rescued from the lion by Queen Nesca who used a heat ray weapon. Jongor trailed Ann to the Arklan city. Once Jongor arrived at the Arklan city he became involved in a civil dispute.

 

 

A faction of the Arklans wanted Queen Nesca to abdicate. Abdication meant death however. Jongor convinced her not to go along with this. Morton joined sides with Jongor and told Jongor that he and Schiller were Anarchists like Hofer. Nesca tricked Jongor and his friends into a tunnel that she closed behind them. She said that she had only told him that she would not accept the decision of her people. She had realized that her people had grown degenerate and that their time was up. As Jongor and his party left the city on a boat the Arklan city was shaken by a huge explosion and split apart by rivers of fire. It almost seemed as though an earthquake combined with an erupting volcano destroyed the city. There are two versions of what happened when Jongor had his final look at the Arklan city. In the original pulp story he thought he saw an image of a winged Queen Nesca flying above the city but was not certain if he imagined it or not. In the later novelized version as Jongor looked back at the city, he and the others saw Queen Nesca and several of her followers flying above the city. They had been transformed into winged centaurs.

 

As Moore related in Jongor Fights Back, upon leaving the ruined city, Alan, Ann and Jongor were accosted by the Murtos who have with them Calazao, a nine foot giant whom they have paid to capture Jongor. Jongor and the gigantic Calazao exchanged a couple of strikes. However when confronted with fifty Murtos and the nine foot giant Jongor decided that discretion was the better part of valor and made a strategic retreat. As he fled a thrown club bashed him on the head, and Jongo sustained amnesia.  Not remembering who Alan and Ann were, Jongor left them to be captured by the Murtos. Eventually they escaped on their own but got separated.

 

Jongor wandered about the Lost Land and comes across another set of white explorers named Gnomer and Rouse. They said that they were scientists who had learned of the Murtos and believed them to be the missing link. When he refused to lead them to the city of the Murtos they captured him to force him to lead them to the city of the Murtos. However they also said that they had aerial maps of the lost land that they later used to find the Murtos. He summoned a dinosaurs to run the white hunters off.

 

After escaping the dinosaurs the white hunters came across the Murtos who have once again captured Ann. Ann translated for them. The hunters made a deal with the Murtos to help them capture or kill Jongor. When Jongor reappeared, having recovered his memory, Ann warned Jongor about the ambush. Jongor escaped but returned with three meat eating dinosaurs. This time the hunters used Ann as a hostage to have him call these dinosaurs away.

 

He allowed himself to be captured and everyone goes to the mining facility. There was a large excavation at the bottom of which is a strange machine. Rouse and Gnomer found their way to the bottom of the pit through a tunnel and turned on the machine. The Murtos believed the sound was their Great Lost God. The Murtos wanted to sacrifice Ann and Jongor to the Lost God. They resisted. A fight ensued and at the end the two hunters and several Murtos are dead.. Alan also showed up and was reunited with his sister. As they were departing Calazao reappeared to attack Jongor, Jongor sidesteps him and lets him fall into the pit. Ann, Alan and Jongor once again head out of the Lost Land.

 

This is where Williams’ account of Jongor’s adventures ends.

 

As we mentioned earlier, Robert Moore Williams was working with partial information, however we have the benefit of sixty years of additional data about the Jongor and the Lost Land as well about the Wold Newton Family.

 

According to Williams the Lost Land was a valley inside of a mountain chain surrounded by desert. The valley was large enough for there to have been two major cities, a large mining colony and a race of metal working giants which implied at least iron age technology. This would have had to have been accompanied by an agrarian support system. These three civilizations were spaced out enough so that interaction between them was minimal. The valley also had distinct ecosystems of swamp, jungle and plains, It was large enough to support large herbivorous dinosaurs, large carnivorous dinosaurs and large predatory flying reptiles. Among the mentioned fauna were lions, leopard, deer and boar.

 

Williams stated that the Lost Land remained unknown and uncharted because any plane flying over the area would be swept from the skies by the tornados that Murtos generated. However he contradicts himself in Jongor Fights Back, when two explorers were portrayed as having aerial maps of the Lost Land..

 

By 1939 air planes could fly higher than the cloud cover, so the tornados would not have been a deterrent, a plane could have easily taken photos of the valley. Plus by 1939 the topography of Australia was well mapped so a mountainous region with this anomalous weather pattern would have been well noted. Also by 1939 Australia was well colonized and most of the Australian Aborigines had been put on Reserves.[12]

 

In Moore’s version the desert surrounding this mountainous region was inhabited by wild and ferocious Australian aborigines. The mountains were treacherous that it deterred over land travel Williams also stated that the Gordons stayed in the Lost Land because they were trapped and were unable to find a way out. Yet he also claims that both Robert Jordan and Jongor did find the passage out of the mountains but were stymied by the vast desert surrounding the mountains. Alan Hunter also had difficulty finding a way out and was trapped on the Lost Land until Jongor and Ann Hunter found him. Jongor also told Ann and Alan Hunter that he could lead them out of the Lost Land. This means he had acquired knowledge that had eluded his parents.

 

The Gordons also seemed to have been the only human beings that dwelt in the Lost Land. Ann Hunter and her party were the first humans besides his parents that Jongor had encountered.

 

Robert Moore Williams is inconsistent as to whether the Blackfellows actually inhabited the Lost Land or merely visited it. At the beginning of Jongor of the Lost Land the Aborigines seem to be desert dwellers that feared to approach the mountain. In The Return of Jongor a group of Aborigines are in the Lost Land’s jungle intent of doing evil to any whites they come across. Williams did not say whether or not these Aborigines had come with Schiller and Morton.  Hofer, Schiller, Morton, Varsey and Alan Hunter had all come to the mountain because they had heard tales of the strange valley that existed beyond the mountains. However after Varsey found his way out of the Lost Land, Ann Hunter and her party, as well as at least four other humans found their way into the Lost Land

 

Some traffic into the Lost Land by humans may have occurred infrequently but any exit from seems to have been rare. However the conditions in the Lost Land were so inhospitable to human habitation that a foothold could not be established. Quick visits could be survived; prolonged ones were for the most part, terminal. I am excluding the Murtos and the Aklan and the unnamed race of giants because although they were sentient humanoids they were not Homo Sapiens.

 

According to Williams, the Gordons’ plane crashed in the valley when it was knocked out of the air by the tornados that the Murians were able to generate. However this seems to have been the only plane ever to suffer that fate. When Hofer discovered the control tower for the tornadoes it seemed some distance from the Murtos’ city and area where it was located was unoccupied. If the Murtos operated the tornado creator, as Williams seemed to indicate, how did they turn it on whenever a plane appeared? They would have had to hurry several miles in a moments to the reach the tower and turn on the machinery.

 

Also Williams never really explained the strange voice that sounded when Anne and her party first entered the Lost Land. If you recall, the voice, as translated by Hofer, warned the Blackfellows who acted as Ann Hunter’s bearers to stay away from the Lost Land and then commanded them to attack Ann and her party.

 

Despite Robert Moore Williams claims that the the Lost Land was becoming quite well known in the late 1930’s, it appears to have remained hidden even to this day. While it is true that the mountainous region containing Lost Land may not be in the path of commercial air flights and so would not be spotted in that fashion, it also seems to have escaped modern day satellite imagery. This seems odd considering that even the remnants of ancient rivers can now be discovered through satellite imagery.

 

Although I hesitate to say this, I think that the Lost Land has not been found by either aerial photography or satellite imagery because it is not there to be found. The Lost Land does not and has never existed—in Australia.

 

There is a theory that the Lost Land is a remnant of Pellucidar[13] however compelling this might be, it does not account for all of the mysteries of the Lost Land. There is also the fact that there is not any mention of either Alan Hunter and Varsey or Ann Hunter and her party traveling for 500 miles beneath the mountain. Even if the Lost Land was like Zanthodon, which is to say existing in one of the hollow self contained worlds that layer the earth like an onion, again there is no mention of any protracted travel beneath the mountains.

 

Both Alan and Anne Hunter seem to have entered the Lost Land through a specific mountain passage. 

 

So it would seem that the Lost Land is above ground which brings us to another mystery.

 

So far as we know, there aren’t any indigenous Australian plants or animals in the Lost Land. There isn’t a mention of such animals Jongor books, except a mention of Kangaroo hunting by one of hunters in the second book, and this took place outside the Lost Land. Even if the mountains did dissuade travel by land and the tornados prevented aerial incursions, this would not have prevented native Australian flora and fauna from finding its way into the region. If the Lost Land had been an island such as Skull Island or Caprona, then this might be understandable but the Lost Land supposedly existed as valley in a vast continent.

 

It would seem then that the only real contact between the Lost Land and Australia would be through the mountain passage and the one occurrence of a plane crash.

 

Despite the boos and catcalls that I will undoubtedly get for this assertion, I must conclude that the Lost Land is a pocket universe. Some of my fellow scholars may deride me for this saying that this is an over used speculation. Perhaps it is. However in this case, I think that there is a great deal of evidence to support this claim.

 

The vast area of the Lost Land has never been photographed, despite Williams’ claim in Jongor Fights Back that Rouse and Gnomer’s had an aerial map. Their need for Jongor as a guide seems to disprove that assertion.

 

This vast area also seems to have a self-contained ecosystem that does not contain any indigenous Australian flora or fauna.

 

The entrance and exit seems to be from one point. (We will deal with the Gordon’s plane in a bit)

 

The eclectic flora and fauna which includes dinosaurs, centaurs, monkey-men and such non-Australian species such as lions, deer and boar seems to have been artificially placed in proximity to one another.

 

The specific mention that the Aklans were created but not by the Murians.

 

The statement that dinosaurs were put in the Lost Land thousands of years ago.

 

There are hints that at one time there were humans in the Lost Land but they seemed to have disappeared. 

 

We know that Jadawin of the Thoan[14] created centaurs and placed them on his World of Tiers, although he placed them on the level devoted to the Plains Indian.[15] We also know that Jadawin possessed weather controlling machinery. The Atlantis level of the world of Tiers was wiped out by hurricanes, flood and lightning storms. However I don’t think that Jadawin created the pocket universe known as the Lost Land. He was meticulous in his creations and the Lost Land seems a bit haphazard in the way it is laid out.

 

The Lost Land may have been a research laboratory created and used by the beings who created the Thoan’s universe. As part of the experiment they recreated extinct dinosaur species, two extinct hominid species, and the centaurs. One of the extinct hominid species the Monkey-Men, who seem to have been either the same species or a related species to the Waz-Don, Ho-Don and perhaps the Tor O Don of Pal ul Don, a region of Africa that also has living dinosaur fauna.[16]

 

The other extinct hominid species that inhabited the Lost Land was a race of giants which I suspect were the Titanthrops, the same species as depicted in Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series.

 

The creators of the Lost Land also created the centaurs. Whether they did this simply as an exercise in creative biology or whether they did so to bring life to a creature from their own mythology is uncertain.

 

The Murians left behind some of their number or else created some humans to be caretakers of this laboratory/preserve. Whether these caretakers had any connection with Lemuria as speculated by Williams, through Hofer, is unknown. It is possible since the Lemurian histories edited by Lin Carter also use crystals as power sources.[17] If this is the case, then when Lemuria fell this group imposed self isolation, away from the barbarous earth.

 

The caretakers controlled the weather machines and used crystals to control the dinosaurs, pterodactyls and if necessary, the monkey men. The centaurs were to be left alone to develop on their own. In time however the caretakers became decadent and lost the knowledge of controlling the weather machines. This device may have even been controlled by a single family that died out. The humans used the crystals to enslave the monkey-men and domesticate the dinosaurs. They also enslaved any humans unlucky enough to wander into the Lost Land. They clashed with the centaurs several time and although the conflicts ended in stalemates, it reduced their respective populations.

 

Jadawin[18] discovered this pocket universe when he was still a relatively young Lord and even though he thought it belonged to his Uncle Red Orc he left it relatively undisturbed. Having discovered the weather machines he established himself as a god over the leblabiy[19] population, he found there. He was intrigued by the centaurs and stayed with them for a while. He discovered that he could not replicate their genetic code and so designed his own centaurs based on their biology.

 

He also decided to leave traps for any other Lord who entered the Lost Land.

 

First he changed the gate so that allowed anyone in but so that the exit gate would operate on a random pattern, unless a code was entered. A lucky person might get through, which I suspect was the case with Varsey. However despite Williams’ claim, I do not believe that Robert Gordon ever found a way out of the Lost Land.  If he had I believe that they would have taken their chances crossing the desert when Jongor was ten or so. Jongor may have, but this was because he knew the code, which had been part of his education from Queen Nesca. Jadawin may have given her ancestors the code for the gate in return for information about their biology or as a fail safe should another Lord take control of the pocket universe. Or else they had learned the code after millennia of attempts.

 

Jadawin also set up a program to activate the tornados if anyone entered the pocket universe, if anyone ventured too near the control center or other certain areas in the Lost Land. He also set up an audible warning system that broadcast a gloating warning to the other Lords. Finally he re-designed the pterodactyls to be larger and genetically programmed them to ferociously attack Lords, however he made one serious error and failed program them to only attack humans with specific genetic markers.

 

It probably did not occur to him that since the leblabiy were also genetically identical to the Lords that they would become targets for the teros. After Jadawin altered the teros’ genetic code and brain structure the control crystals no longer had any effect against them.

 

After Jadawin left the Lost Land the humans in the Lost Land became the primary prey of the teros. The humans tried seeking aid from the centaurs but none was given. They also used the remaining original teros, which they could control, against the ones that Jadawin had created but these were wiped out.  In a few short generations the humans were wiped out. I suspect this was through a combination of predation by the teros and a slave uprising by the monkey men when the human numbers dwindled. The depopulated city was taken over by the monkey-men.[20] With their primary prey gone, the teros began to prey on the other dinosaur species and mammalian. Although they would take any prey of opportunity, they would, because of Jadawin’s programming, fixate on one species until it was exterminated and move onto something else. By the time that Jongor’s parents arrived in the Lost Land most of the large animal species in the Lost Land been hunted to extinction.

 

Perhaps this might be a good place to explain the anomaly presented by the Gordon’s plane crash. Although Williams stated that the plane was knocked down the tornadoes that prevented any planes from flying over the Lost Land this is just an assumption on his part. He should not be blamed for this because it is true that a storm did cause the Gordon’s plane to crash, and considering the weather control devices in the Lost Land it is rather easy to assume that this storm was part of its defense mechanism. However the Gordon’s plane crashed in the mountains outside of the Lost Land. Robert Gordon found the mountain passage that led into the Lost Land. Rather he found the mountain passage that turned ended in an extra-dimensional portal that opened into the Lost Land. The gate closed behind them and due to its random nature, Robert Jordan never found a way out of the Lost Land.

 

As depicted by Robert Moore Williams Jongor is a cipher. His physical description is black haired and gray eyed.  Often referred to as a giant, we know he is taller than average and muscular in build. Despite Jongor being the eponymous hero Williams spends relatively little time with him. His background is left fairly sketchy.

 

Williams filled in the gaps in the accounts by presenting Jongor as Tarzan-like. Williams’ depiction of Jongor as a Tarzan knock off is also a bit inconsistent. Jongor is articulate and yet, as if, to emphasis his feral upbringing he displays odd gaps in his knowledge such as not knowing what the word apologize meant or what kissing was. Williams seems to forget that Jongor was orphaned at twelve, not two. Even my three year old nephew knows what it means to apologize or what a kiss is.

 

Throughout the three books, Williams only give scant information about Jongor and his life in the Lost Land. His descriptions of the Lost Land are rather sketchy. His narrative focuses more on Alan and Ann Hunter than it does on Jongor. Also although the action of the three Jongor books takes place in a short time period, Williams introduces new background material in each novel in such a way that the narrative seems disjointed.

 

In the first book we are told that Jongor’s parents crashed in the Lost Land and that they perished when he was twelve. Jongor tells Ann Hunter the story of his but this happens off stage the reader is not let in on the specifics. Williams implies that after the teros killed Jongor’s parents he had to fend for himself and was in constant danger from the Murtos and teros.

 

However The Return of Jongor introduces the Arklans, an advanced race of centaurs with whom Jongor had had extensive interaction, yet there had been no mention of them in the previous book. In The Return of Jongor, it was revealed that Queen Nesca rescued Jongor from the teros that killed his parents and took him back to the Aklan city, where he was taught many things including water writing. However we do not learn from Williams how long Jongor stayed in the Aklan city or why he left and was living in the rainforest when he met the Hunters.

 

Although Jongor was a guest of the Aklans, he was seen as a curiosity. He certainly could never be one of them. Although the Murtos were closer to him biologically, they were not human and so regarded them as different from him. Had he been raised by a Murto woman this probably would not have been an issue however, he had been raised by his parents until the age of twelve and then went to live in the advanced city of the Aklans. Neither the Murtos or Arklans were his people; his people were outside of the Lost Land. Jongor knew that he would spend the rest of his life alone, unless he left the Lost Land. He knew about the desert beyond the gate so trained himself to fend for himself and to live off of the land. He was close to completing his self training and felt ready to depart the Lost Land when he ran into Alan Hunter.[21]

 

In addition to being rather vague about Jongor’s background or character, Williams seems not to have researched Australia very well and portrays the Australian Aborigines as stereotypical African natives. As mentioned earlier by the 1930s, most of Australia’s Aborigine population was segregated into missions or reserves, which were in some ways similar to the Native American reservations of the United States.

 

Although there may have been certain “wild” tribes still in the outback, that is people who were overlooked from being forced into the benevolent reserve system, I believe that Williams’ depiction of the “Blackfellows” in the Jongor books is almost completely a fabrication, it was filler material using stock pulp conventions.

 

Varsey and Hofer as well as Schiller and Morton may have hired some aborigines to help them cross the desert but they probably refused to travel into the mountains beyond a certain point. Although Varsey, Hofer et al might have dismissed their refusal as “native superstition” it is quite likely that this area may have been considered as a sacred site and so the aborigines refused to travel through it. They may even have attempted to physically prevent any outsiders from doing so.

 

According to Williams as Ann and her party entered the Lost Land a voice told the “natives” to attack them. The voice spoke in the native tongue which Hofer understood. However this incident was for the most part an invention. A few of the aborigines followed Ann Hunter and her party into the Lost Land in an attempt to make them leave. There was a verbal warning in a foreign tongue that seemed to rise out of the earth; this was actually a recorded message by Jadawin telling his fellow Lords that they were trapped in this valley. Hofer did not under stand the message but said that he did to reinforce his credibility.

 

The few aborigines that followed Ann Hunter’s party in the Lost Land were, unfortunately, wiped out by the onslaught of the teros, Murtos and tornados.

 

The sequence in The Return of Jongor where Alan and Ann were captured by aborigines who also hold Schiller and Morton prisoner is also a fabrication on the part of Williams. In this instance it was action filler for his pulp story. What really seems to have transpired that Morton and Schiller[22] were captured by Murtos looking for Jongor. This must have occurred when Jongor, Ann and Alan Hunter were answering the summons from Queen Nesca.

 

Jongor received his summons via water writing[23] from Queen Nesca and told the Hunters that they had to turn back. However, he decided that if they wanted to go home he would tell them how. Prior to returning to the Aklan city, Jongor gave Alan and Ann instructions on how to get out of the Lost Land. However the Murtos leader used the controlling crystal on Ann to lure her away from the camp. They captured her. Alan and Jongor split up to look for her. Ann escaped from the Murtos on their own but Alan was captured. Jongor freed all three and they followed Ann’s trail. As Williams stated she had been rescued by Queen Nesca of the Aklans.

 

When Jongor and his companions entered the city of the Aklans they were unknowingly entering a city in turmoil. Williams glosses over the nature of the conflict among the Aklan. He does state that Queen Nesca had fallen out of favor with a faction of her people. Her opponents had enough support to call for her abdication, which, by custom, meant she should wait in her quarters for execution. Williams only hints at the nature of the faction opposing Queen Nesca. From what later transpired it appears that they were doomsday cultists, who felt that the Aklan’s time was up and that for balance to restored to the universe they had to leave this plane.

 

One bit of reliable information that Williams related was the declining population of the centaurs. They had never been prolific[24] but in the past few centuries their numbers had declined at a rapidly diminishing rate. Queen Nesca believed that this was a natural part of their evolution since they also aged much slower. They had a legend that when they had achieved a certain level of evolution they would transform into winged beings. She was among those who believed in this legend. She realized that if she abdicated, then the doomsday cultists would hold sway and the Aklan race would become extinct. This was one of the reasons that she defied tradition and did not, at first, acquiesce to being executed.

 

In Williams’ account the looming civil war was prevented when after seeing to Jongor’s safety, Queen Nesca accepted her people’s judgment. As Jongor and the others left the city it was rocked by a massive explosion that was like a combination of an earthquake and a volcanic eruption. This destroyed the Aklan’s city.

 

The most likely explanation for the explosion is that there really was the cultists setting off powerful explosives that shook and finally tumbled the city as it spewed molten rock. I suspect that these explosions were the direct result of the diamonds that Mozdoc had received in payment from the Murtos. They had been used to power some very destructive devices.

 

Williams gives two different accounts as to what happens as Jongor and his friends view the burning city. In the original pulp story Jongor sees a shadow across the moon and is not certain if it is Queen Nesca flying away from the city.  In the novel version Jongor and Anne saw Queen Nesca and several of her followers flying out of the city, having grown wings. If this version is true either the trauma of losing their city had triggered a pre-programmed evolutionary leap that provided the Arklans with wings or else the flying wings were some form of flying harness. We do not have any further information on the Arklans and they do not appear in the third Jongor tale. I think it most likely that they perished in the destruction of their city.

 

Williams’ third story of the series Jongor Fights Back picked up immediately where The Return of Jongor left off. There was however a seven years publication gap between the two stories. After leaving the destroyed city of the Aklan’s Jongor and his party once again ran afoul of the Murtos, who have hired a giant to take down Jongor.[25]

 

In Williams’ version Jongor retreats from the combined forces of the giant and Murtos but suffers a blow to the head that gives him amnesia. He then leaves the area because he does not remember Alan or Ann any longer.

 

It seems more likely that despite Jongor’s great strength and fighting prowess the giant got in a couple of good licks with his ax which gave Jongor severe wounds on his chest and back. It was after he realized he could not win that he retreated. Because of the apparent severity of his wounds the Murtos did not pursue him after they captured Ann and Alan Hunter. However the bit that Jongor suffered from amnesia is something Williams obviously borrowed from Burroughs. Williams was padding the story again.

 

It was quite bold that Williams chose to portray the fight almost exactly as it happened. Why he chose to do this when he changed so much else is unknown. Perhaps he thought this would demonstrate verisimilitude or provide a contrast to the Tarzan epics and so prove that his character was not a Tarzan knock off.

 

The Murtos’ lack of contact with human beings, at least for a very long time, is obvious by their ineptitude at keeping prisoners. The Hunter siblings subsequently escaped from their captivity by the Murtos but became separated.

 

Meanwhile Jongor was found by another two men from the outside.[26]

 

Jongor’s superior physiology in combination with the innate healing properties found in the waters of the Lost Land helped Jongor recover from his wounds in a matter of days rather than weeks or months.[27] When Jongor learned that Rouse and Gnomer wanted him to lead them to the abandoned mining complex, he refused to cooperate. When they persisted Jongor called up a dinosaur to chase them away. In Williams’ accounts of Jongor’s adventures this does seem like an all too frequent deus ex machina, but actually Jongor did not control the dinosaurs unless he felt he had no little choice. The main reason, which Williams either did not know or did not mention, was that using the control crystal gave Jongor splitting headaches. This is probably because he was not trained to use the crystal but had stumbled upon its use. You will notice that he did not use it when he fought the giant. He called the dinosaur to chase Rouse and Gnomer away because he was too weak to do it himself.

 

Shortly after having escaped from the Murtos, Ann was recaptured by them. After Rouse and Gnomer were driven off by Jongor they joined the Murtos who forced Ann to translate for them. The two humans promised the Murtos that they would get Jongor for them, if they were taken to the abandoned mining colony.

 

In Williams’ account, Rouse and Gnomer lured Jongor into an ambush but Ann warned him. Jongor then calls some meat eating dinosaurs but the explorers threaten to kill Ann unless Jongor calls off the dinosaurs and allows himself to be captured.

 

This is only partially true, Jongor was captured because the explorers held Ann as hostage. The ambush and calling of the dinosaurs is another one of Williams’ inventions. What is interesting however is that Jongor was captured instead of killed outright. The Murtos have been trying to kill him all along, so why was he captured? It was not to be a sacrifice to the sun god, only perfect females achieved this honor.

 

The Murtos needed Jongor alive so that they could safely travel into the abandoned mining colony. The previous human occupants had retreated to when the teros had nearly wiped out their population. As they continued to die out they put traps and safeguards in place that would only respond to a human touch. This explains why both Hofer and Alan were able to use the machines without any previous training and why the mining colony remained abandoned and why, despite Williams’ indication to the contrary, the Murtos did not use the weather control devices. Since the believed that Jongor was the last living member of the race that lived there they forced him lead them.

 

According to Williams the Murtos became spooked when noises emanated from the mineshaft. The noise was the sound of a disintegration machine being turned on. The machine lay at the bottom of the shaft and pointed upwards. A control room was on a ledge near the bottom of the pit.

 

 The “disintegrator” was probably used to drill. The ray probably did not disintegrate since obliterating matter is not an efficient way to mine since you would be destroying valuable resources but rather probably converted matter into energy and then efficiently reconstituted it into its base elements.

 

The Murtos thought this was the voice of the Lost God calling for sacrifices had to be made. They wanted to sacrifice Ann and Jongor, however Gnomer and Rouse did not want Jongor sacrificed but went along with sacrificing Ann. Jongor fought back as Ann was tied to a hook that was to be lowered into the shaft. Unfamiliar with the controls Gnomer made the hook rise instead of lower. Jongor wrestled several Muros and tossed them into the pit. He then jumped onto the hook and tried to free Ann. As the Murtos threw spears at Jongor, Alan appeared shoved some of them off a ledge and then retreated. Enraged the Murtos blamed and attacked Rouse, from his vantage point near the bottom of the pit, Gnomer fired on the Murtos and killed several but they still overpowered Rouse and threw him into the mineshaft.  

 

Gnomer lowered the hook towards the bottom of the pit. Jongor swung the hook and cable in an arc and landed on a ledge near Gnomer. He fired his rifle at Jongor and missed. Jongor grappled with him. They wrestled and Jongor broke his neck. The Murtos decided to attack en masse and Jongor turned the disintegration ray on them. The survivors fled.

 

Although it is a relatively short epic the Jongor stories were published over the course of eleven years. Jongor of the Lost Land appeared in 1940, The Return of Jongor in 1944 and Jongor Fight Back in 1951. However the internal chronology indicates that only weeks passed between when Ann Hunter entered the Lost Land and when she exited with her brother and Jongor. Therefore despite the length between the publications the account of their adventures was complete and they must have come out of the Lost Land some time around 1939 or very early 1940 the else the first part of the account would not have been published by late 1940.

 

In 1939 Australia was at war with Germany and tensions between Japan and the other nations in the South Pacific were rising, so it took time for the Hunters to arrange transportation back to the United States. They also had to get identification papers and passports for Jongor. Had Jongor been born in the Lost Land as Williams stated this would have been rather hard, especially since Jongor spoke English with a peculiar accent. Fortunately among the few belongings that Robert Gordon was able to salvage from their plane was Jongor’s birth certificate and his own discharge papers. Jongor was able to get an American passport in his rightful name of John Kevin Gordon.

 

Jongor and the Hunters arrived in New York in the summer of 1940. Alan Hunter was the talk of the town for a couple of weeks. Although the Hunters and Jongor gave scant information about Jongor and the Lost Land in the interviews, Alan told some interested parties a bit more than he should have during one over indulgent evening.

 

Alan and Ann began an intensive campaign to acclimatize Jongor to the outside world. Since he was highly intelligent and was not a primitive[28] in only a few months very few people could have guessed he was not a native born New Yorker.

 

In the spring of 1941, the Hunters were visited by an old family friend named William J. Donovan. He had been friends with their father when they were both young lawyers on Wall Street. Donovan was interested in getting their perspective on the situation in Australia, since they had visited there recently. He was intrigued to learn that Jongor had been raised in the Australian wilds and that Alan had managed to survive on his own when his guide had deserted him. He made a strange request to Alan and Jongor, if the country went to war, before enlisting they should come to see him first.

 

Ann had promised her father she would only marry a college graduate so Jongor took entrance examinations for Columbia University and began classes in the fall of 1941. Alan had also decided to resume his interrupted college career. However the events of December 1941, interrupted both Jongor’s and Alan’s college careers.

 

William Donovan was Coordinator of Information, the head of a new organization that was supposed to coordinate intelligence gathered by various United States’ intelligence agencies which consistently refused to coordinate efforts or share information. He was given great leeway to choose people to work at his as yet unnamed organization. Donovan preferred intelligent, flexible people who had traveled abroad or were well rounded in world affairs. He thought that Alan and Jongor would be a nice fit for the organization, believing that their experience in both jungle and desert environments would prove useful in commando activities. 

 

They both agreed and were among the first recruits sent to the British built COI training facility code named Camp X located near Toronto. Here they learned commando techniques. By the time their training was finished the COI had become the OSS. After Camp X they reported to the OSS Training Area B at Catoctin Mountain Park. This was a converted Civil Conservation Corps facility.

 

Jongor and Alan Hunter became part of Detachment 101 which was assigned to the China Burma India theatre in the summer of 1942. Not one to twiddle her thumbs Ann also joined the OSS and became a communications specialist. This is not as cushy a job as it sounds, she was air dropped into rural France to operate a radio and to carry out any other missions that needed to be done. On one of her missions she coordinated with a group of U. S commandos under the command of. Colonel Aldo Raine who assassinated Hitler and Goebbels. Unfortunately their targets turned out to be doubles for the real Hitler and Goebbels.

 

While in India Jongor and Alan Hunter worked with various indigenous resistance groups, training them in modern weaponry. They also worked with British commandos under the command of Group Captain John Clayton, Lord Greysoke. One of their India based missions was marked with the highest possible top secret classification, although it is believe to have involved Group Captain Clayton and a guerilla leader named Tiger Evans. Evans was purportedly the prince consort of a small Indian kingdom which had remained independent of the British Raj.

 

Jongor and Alan were sent into China in 1943 to coordinate guerilla operations with a female pirate named Lai Choi San and a mountain guerilla named Chen-ta. After this Jongor and Alan Hunter worked with their fellow OSS agent Hubert de la Bath to break up a munitions smuggling ring run by an Asian named Mr. Chang. Chang sold arms and information to all interested parties without regard for politics. His men also ambushed small parties of guerillas and raided local villages to obtain weapons.

 

In August 1944 Jongor and Hunter were, unbeknownst to General MacArthur[29], air dropped into the Philippines. They were sent on a rescue mission to extract an American operative. While enroute they coordinated on two sabotage missions with a Philippine insurgent known only as El Diablo Cabeza and one joint operation with a small commando group lead by Ensign Chuck Palmer of the USN.

 

After the allied campaign to retake the Philippines was fully underway, Jongor and Alan Hunter and their team were sent to coordinate efforts with the Viet Mihn. As the allies pushed the Japanese back from their conquered lands, the Japanese decided to consolidate their hold on Indochina by “freeing” Indonchina from French rule. Jongor and his team were instrumental in preventing the Japanese take over of the city of Pnom Dhek and eliminating the Japanese battalion stationed at Lodidhapura.

 

After the surrender of Japan, Jongor and Alan were assigned to Japan. Ostensibly they were to work with Army intelligence to uncover any pockets of resistance among the civilization population. Although part of their assignment was to watch MacArthur, since Donovan neither liked nor trusted him.

 

In the two months that they were in Japan they had some successes. Working with Colonel Hugh North of Army Intelligence they uncovered a plot, by the Black Dragon Society working in concert with Princess Maru to gas several US army barracks and assassinate some moderate leaders. Also tipped by two service men, Sgt. “Burns” Bannion and Lt. Curtis Stone, they were able to stop a blackmarket operation in which, instead of being destroyed, confiscated firearms were being channeled to criminal organizations such as the Tono crime family.

 

During the course of this investigation the OSS was abruptly disbanded and the counterintelligence units came under direct control of the Army as the Strategic Services Unit. MacArthur used Jongor and Alan’s bloody shootout with the Tono crime family as an excuse to send them to the Philippines to search for Huk rebels and Japanese soldiers that were either unaware or did not care that the war was over. Their former ally El Dialbo Cabeza had disappeared during the course of the war and many of their former guerilla companions were now members of the Hukbalahap.

 

After nearly a year in the jungle, they had found three Japanese soldiers that needed to be repatriated. Additionally they discovered a colony of Neanderthals who dwelt among the ruins a city. Many of the remaining buildings reminded Jongor of those in the Lost Land, and so he believed this was a remnant of Lemuria. They had learned of the city from following the trail of a Soviet agent who was searching for the legendary city. He wanted to use the wealth or lost technology combined with the current situation in Japan to bring Japan into the Soviet Union. The agent Oka-Shima was of both Soviet and Japanese descent. Jongor and Alan Hunt were able to keep Oka-Shima from finding the city and preventing from further searches. Although they kept the city from falling into Soviet hands, they were unaware that one of their Philippine guides stole a number of jewels from the city and sold them on the black market. They were however not ordinary gems but were akin to the crystal Jongor possessed. After this mission he learned that he had been furloughed from the Secret Services Division.

 

In 1948 Jongor learned that a criminal organization that rose from the ashes of Germany was seeking the Lost Land for its technology especially its mind control. Jongor, along with help from Mark Hood of Intersect terminated the Germans. Jongor then used explosives to bury the gate into the Lost Land. 

 

Jongor traveled back to New York to resume his interrupted education. Ann had returned the year before and was already at school. She studied zoology and veterinary medicine. He studied biology, zoology, botany and paleontology. After such a prolonged absence and with some insight gained from more years of maturity, Ann decided that she was not going to wait until Jongor had graduated from college to get married. They were married in late 1948 and in 1949, they had issue, Robert Alan Gordon.

 

After receiving his Bachelor of Science degree Jongor was contacted by a solicitor from the firm of Dodson, Fogg, Greystock  and Quirk.  He was told that he was the heir of of a British peerage and to several estates in Great Britain. If he chose to petition the King for the restoration of the peerage Jongor would have to become a British citizen.  While Jongor was nominally American, having been born of American parents, and had fought for the United States, his background and war experience also gave him strong ties to England and Australia. He and Ann discussed the matter at some length and finally decided that this was too good an opportunity to pass over.

 

While waiting for the legal work to be done, Jongor enrolled in Virginia Polytechnic for a Masters degree of science specializing in Zoology. He had just about finished the degree when he received the letters of patent recreating the extinct title in his name. Jongor and his family visited the London townhouse first and then the property in Dunstanburg which turned out to farms attached to a crumbling ruin of a castle They then visited the manor, the Shaws in Scotland. Between the two they preferred the Shaws, its rustic charms were more to their liking than the hustle and bustle of London.

 

They had barely taken up residence when they were offered and incredible opportunity. During the war Jongor had worked on a couple of missions with some commando’s trained by RAF Group Captain John Clayton. At the time Alan Hunter had thought it a bit odd that an air force pilot was so conversant with jungle craft, but Jongor hadn’t thought it all that odd considering his own background. Group Captain Clayton had a copy of the pulp magazine Fantastic Adventures, October 1940. The cover had a man sitting on the back of a tyrannosaurs rex shooting a bow and arrow at a pterodactyl. Captain Clayton asked if the man on the dinosaur was John Gordon.

 

Jongor told Captain Clayton the truth despite his initial misgivings about doing so. As before he recognized a kindred spirit.

 

Captain Clayton listened intently and told Jongor that if Ann and he were interested in pursuing their professions instead of living as country gentry. he had a wonderful opportunity for them. They would be among the first to work among new species and species considered extinct. If they agreed, they would have to travel back and forth between England, Africa and the South Seas. They would also reside outside of England for three-fourths of the year. They would also be working in concert with Captain Clayton’s son, John Paul Clayton, a noted archeologist as part of a research team funded by the Archimedes Foundation.[30]

 

Jongor admitted he was intrigued but Anne was more cautious. She asked if he had any proof. Clayton showed her some photographs of Clayton riding a brightly colored triceratops, Clayton with a winged man, Clayton with a hairy tailed man, Clayton standing near a clutch of just hatched stegosaurus.

 

She asked where these were taken.

 

Captain Clayton asked if she had ever heard of Pal ul Don or Caspak.

 

She laughed and said she had that they were in the Tarzan books, Having read them was one of the reasons Alan had been so mad to find the Lost Land.

 

Captain Clayton told them he was actually Lord Greystoke, also known as Tarzan.

 

Ann started to laugh but stopped when she realized Clayton was serious. After all, was it so hard to believe considering her husband’s origins?

 

As the Gordon’s looked at one another and began to smile, Tarzan said he would arrange for with John Paul for them to take up residence on the Mutia Escarpment.

 

Postnote: The adventures of the Gordons and the Claytons in Africa, Pal ul don and Caspak will be explored in the forth coming article,  Savage Lords and Savage Lands.