Thing is that as far as idealism goes, Quartermain is very much of a piece with Kipling's true-heroic figures, like the spy-masters in "Kim". The reason they're accepted and followed by their "natives" (to use the 19th-century word) is because they've taken the trouble to understand and integrate themselves into the culture around them, instead of blindly trying to recreate "Englishness" in a land which has its own culture. And being heroes, they of course behave honourably towards their own people. So instead of being army-style leaders who have authority because of their rank, they're leaders of a band of equals, having authority only because the rest of the group know they're the best people to command - certainly not just because of their skin colour.

Both Rider Haggard and Kipling were free with counter-examples too: most obviously, "The man who would be king" has white anti-heroes whose hubris catches up with them, and "Black heart and white heart" explicitly shows the Zulu warrior as the hero and the white man as the villain. Most of their stories also have various minor characters who impede the heroes and their party with their prejudices.

A lot of the problem today with Rider Haggard is probably the casual attitude of the black characters to killing - it doesn't sit well with modern attitudes. But it is pretty historically accurate. The attitude to killing isn't black-specific either, when you reckon that most of the whites abroad would be soldiers or ex-soldiers and therefore wouldn't have much compunction about killing either.

Graham.