title: Ibong Adarna

text: Don Juan, thanks to Leonora's enchanted ring found in the well, could avail himself of the help of a wolf which cured him of his wounds, fix his dislocations, and bring him to the medicinal waters of the Jordan, and took him out of the well. Already torn between all hope of ever finding the Adarna, Don Juan resolved to return to the Kingdom. But to his confusion, he was unable to find his way. No one could tell him precisely which was the way that would lead him to the kingdom of his father. While sleeping under a tree, the Adarna awakens him and convinces him to turn his back on Leonora because Maria Blanca, the daughter of King Salermo in Reino de Los Cristales was better. He came to a hermit that consulted all of the animals from the surrounding areas, but none of them could tell the prince the direction towards Reino de Los Cristales. But the king of all these animals, a swiftly soaring eagle (real name Olicornio), having compassion for his troubles, offered to take the prince to wherever he desired. After an epic flight, the prince and the eagle came to a distant crystal lake, whose shores they landed to rest from their long and tiresome flight. Then the eagle related to his companion the secrets of the crystal lake. This was the bathing place where, in certain hours of the day, the three daughters of the most powerful and most feared king of the surrounding regions used to dive into the water and swim; and for this reason, it was not proper for the prince to commit any indiscretion if he desired to remain and see the spectacle of the bath. Don Juan remained and when the hour of the bathing arrived he saw plunging into the pure crystal water the figures of the three most beautiful princesses whom his sinful eyes had ever seen. He then secretly hid and kept one of the princess's dresses. When the princess noticed the theft, her two sisters had already gone. The prince hurriedly ran to her and on his knee begged her pardon and placed at her feet her stolen dress and at the same time poured forth the most ardent and tender professions of love. Pleased by his gentleness and gallant phrases, the princess also fell in love with him; but she advised him that it would be better for him to leave before her father discovers his intrusion. If he did not do so he would be converted into another piece of stone for the walls of the enchanted palace in which they live, in the same way, that all the other suitors who aspired for their hands had been transformed. On being informed of the adventure of the bold prince, the king sent for him.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: Don Juan, who would risk everything for the privilege of seeing his beloved, presented himself to the king in spite of the princess' warning. The king, greatly impressed with the youth's tact and self-possession, chose to give him a series of tests both gigantic and impossible for ordinary mortals. After completing these trials the king was satisfied and offered Don Juan his daughter. However, the princess, fearing that her father might resort to a new trick to foil their happiness, ordered the prince to direct himself to the royal stables in order to take the best horse and have him ready for them to flee on that same night. Unfortunately, the prince in his hurry, took the wrong horse and the king came immediately went in pursuit of the fugitives. The king, riding the best horse, pursued them tenaciously but through the use of cunning magic, the princess helped them to outrace the king.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: When at last they found themselves safe and free, it did not take them long before they could reach the portals of the Berbanian Kingdom. But the prince, alleging that he should have such preparations duly made for entry into the royal palace as are appropriate for her category and dignity, left Doña Maria on the way promising to return for her once he had informed the committee to receive her. Once in the midst of the happiness of palace life, Don Juan soon forgot his profession of love to Doña Maria. He became dazzled by the beauty of Princess Leonora who had been waiting for him during all the days of his absence and he sought her hand in marriage while Doña Maria was impatiently waiting for his return. When she discovered Don Juan's infidelity, the pilgrim princess made use of the talisman which she always carried with her and adorned it with the most beautiful royal garments and carried in a large coach drawn by eight sorrel-colored horses with four palfreys, she presented herself at the door of the palace practically inviting herself to the royal wedding of Prince Juan and Princess Leonora.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: Out of respect for a so beautiful guest from foreign lands and on the occasion of the wedding itself, there were celebrated tournaments, in one Doña Maria succeeded in inserting as one of the number dance of a negrita and a negrito created from nothing through her marvelous talisman. In the dance the negrita carried a whip in her hand and with it she pitilessly lashed her negrito partner, calling him Don Juan, while she proceeded to remind of all the vicissitudes of fortune undergone by him at the side on Doña Maria, the part which was played by the whipping negrito: the scene of the bath, the different tests to which he had been subjected by her father, the flight of both that was full of accidents, and his cruel abandonment of her on the way. Every crack of the whip which fell on the shoulders of the negrito was felt by Don Juan as if it was him who was being whipped. After all this, Don Juan finally remembered Doña Maria. He then gave Princess Leonora and the kingdom of Berbania to Prince Pedro while he and Doña Maria returned to Reino de los Cristales. When they came back, they found the kingdom in a mourning state, following the deaths of Doña Maria's father and sisters. The kingdom rejoiced when they came back and crowned them their king and queen.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: The Ibong Adarna is often described as the most colorful bird in Philippine folklore. It is also thought to share a resemblance to other legendary birds such as the Sarimanok and the phoenix.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: Being one of the most colorful birds endemic in the Philippines, local birders associate the Philippine trogon ("Harpactes ardens") to the mythical bird.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: According to professor Damiana Eugenio, the "Ibong Adarna" or "The Adarna Bird" epic reworks and combines themes from recognizable folktales of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, namely types ATU 551, "The Sons on a Quest for a Wonderful Remedy for their Father"; ATU 301, "The Three Stolen Princesses" (hero's descent into a lower world, pit or hole to rescue kidnapped princesses), and ATU 313, "The Magical Flight" (hero meets villain's daughter and falls in love with her; her father imposes tasks on the hero; hero and villain's daughter escape together at the end of the tale).


title: Ibong Adarna

text: According to Dean Fansler, the romance is very popular in the archipelago, with at least five different language printings: Tagalog, Pampango, Visayan, Ilocano and Bicol. The differences between the literary versions led Fansler to believe in a folkloric origin for the tale.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: Dean Fansler recognized that the wooing of Maria, the enchanter's daughter, by prince Juan was "reminiscent" of swan maiden tales: hero steals clothes of bathing maidens.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: The story of Ibong Adarna is known all over the Philippines and has been told in different languages and media.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: Narcisa “Doña Sisang” de Leon of LVN Studios produced the first two "Ibong Adarna" films. The first one, made in 1941, starred Mila del Sol as Prinsesa Maria, Fred Cortes as Prinsipe Juan, Ester Magalona, Vicente Oliver, Deanna Prieto, Ben Rubio and Angeles Gayoso who voiced the Ibong Adarna. It had a magical sequence that showed the singing of the bird. That used a painstakingly hand-painted process called "Varicolor", where the bird was colorized in this otherwise black and white film. LVN was able to archive copies of the film which was shown again in theaters after the war in the late 40s and 50s.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: Fifteen years later, in 1956, LVN produced a second version, this time under the full direction of an older Manuel Conde, and starred Nida Blanca, Nestor de Villa, Carlos Salazar, Cecilia Lopez, Nita Javier and Jose Vergara. The 1956 film was the first Filipino commercial film shot and shown in its entirety in Eastman Color.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: Roda Film Productions produced 2 movies, "Ibong Adarna" (1972) and its sequel "Ang Hiwaga ng Ibong Adarna" (1973) starring Philippine Comedy King Dolphy as the lead Prince Adolfo and comedians Panchito Alba as Prince Alfonso, Babalu as Prince Albano and Rosanna Ortiz as the Ibong Adarna.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: Tagalog Pictures, Inc. produced the film "Si Prinsipe Abante At Ang Lihim ng Ibong Adarna" in 1990 starring comedian Rene Requiestas as the lead Prinsipe Abante (), Paquito Diaz as Prinsipe Atras (), Joaquin Fajardo as Prinsipe Urong-Sulong (synonymous to "atras-abante"; ) and Monica Herrera as Prinsesa Luningning/the Ibong Adarna.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: In 1996, Star Cinema produced the movie "Ang TV Movie: The Adarna Adventure". Jolina Magdangal played the Ibong Adarna/Prinsesa Adarna. The cast included Nida Blanca as Lola Binyang, Tirso Cruz III as Prinsipe Diego, Dindo Arroyo as Prinsipe Pedro, Gio Alvarez as Prinsipe Juan and Gamaliel Viray as Hari ng Berbanya along with the kids and teens of Ang TV.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: "Adarna: The Mythical Bird" which premiered on December 25, 1997, is the first full-length Filipino local animated film. It starred Jolina Magdangal—who previously played the Ibong Adarna—as the voice of Adarna along with other voice casts: Marvin Agustin, Martin Nievera and Regine Velasquez. Nievera and Velasquez sung the soundtrack "Touched by Your Love" and "Nagmamahal", "Believe It" was performed by Velasquez and "Halakhak" by The Youth.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: A young man sets out on a dangerous quest for a magical bird with the power to heal any ailment in "Ibong Adarna: The Pinoy Adventure". The 2014 film starred Rocco Nacino as Prinsipe Sigasig, Joel Torre as Sultan Mabait, Angel Aquino as Sultana Mabunyi, Leo Martinez as Datu Maimbot, Benjie Paras as Sipsipayo, Ronnie Lazaro as Dulangkaw, Patricia Fernandez as Diwata, Lilia Cuntapay as Bruha, Gary Lising as Nuno ng Lipi, Miss Intercontinental 2018 Karen Gallman as Adarna and Philip "Kohol" Supnet as Higante.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: “MALA” (Movies Adapted from Literary Arts), an educational puppetry film series for children directed by actor Xian Lim and written by renowned ventriloquist Ronaldo "Ony" Carcamo, is part of the Cultural Center of the Philippines' "Sining Sigla", a season-long virtual outreach program of the CCP Office of the President Arsenio “Nick” Lizaso. Lim and Carcamo used muppets, visual effects and live action with music and poetry in the dialogue on their adaptation. MALA's production designers are shadowplay and puppet designer Aina Ramolete and production designer and art director Kaye Banaag. Joined by music composer Jem Florendo and sound designer Miguel Hernandez.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: In time for the 100th year of Philippine cinema, Cinema One brought the film that was scanned in a high definition 4K resolution back via cable TV on June 30, 2019.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: In 2013, GMA Network produced "Adarna", a contemporary television series adaptation starring Kylie Padilla in the title role.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: In the 50th episode of season 1 of GMA's drama fantasy anthology series "Daig Kayo ng Lola Ko" which aired on April 22, 2018, lola Goreng (Gloria Romero) narrated the story of the Ibong Adarna. The episode starred Kyline Alcantara as Ibong Adarna, Jeric Gonzales as Juan, Lucho Ayala as Pedro, Aaron Yanga as Diego and Rey 'PJ' Abellana as Fernando.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: Ballet Manila soloist Abigail Oliveiro took on the role of Ibong Adarna with Mark Sumaylo as Don Pedro, Romeo Peralta as Don Diego and Ballet Manila's Principal dancer Rudy de Dios as Don Juan.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: It featured music by Diwa de Leon, with Gia Macuja Atchison as the voice of Ibong Adarna, and script by Angela Blardony Ureta.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: Ballet Manila's CEO and Artistic Director Lisa Macuja-Elizalde described the show as "a modern ballet with neo-classical and classical styles that serve as the cornerstone of the dance vocabulary." It even featured the "Alitaptap () Dance" and the "Monkey Dance". It made its world premiere on August 26, 2017, at the Aliw Theater stage.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: REP staged an English version of the epic which featured fun, child-friendly music, and bright and colorful costumes.


title: Ibong Adarna

text: Miss Universe 2018 Catriona Gray’s preliminary gown by Mak Tumang at the Miss Universe preliminary competition was called “Adarna: Blazing Siren.” Her gown which was inspired by the Ibong Adarna and the Phoenix Mikimoto Crown was adorned with layers of embroidered gold feathers and thousands of hand-placed genuine Swarovski crystals in different shades of orange and topaz; she paired it with a nationalistic pair of dangling earrings she designed herself, Tessera Jewelry executed her vision with the Philippine sun and golden South sea pearls.


title: Far Cry 2

text: Far Cry 2 is a 2008 first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A top-down shooter version for mobile phones was developed and published by Gameloft. It is the second mainline entry in the "Far Cry" series. Set in a fictional East African country engulfed in civil war, the storyline follows a mercenary who is assigned to kill the Jackal, a weapons dealer inflaming the conflict. The player navigates the open world, completing missions for factions and allies called Buddies while managing their health and equipment. A competitive multiplayer mode allows players to fight in teams or as individuals.


title: Far Cry 2

text: Production took three and a half years, with concept work beginning during the production of "Far Cry Instincts" (2005). Director Clint Hocking conceived the setting and design, which he wanted to be more realistic than the original "Far Cry" (2004). The narrative and tone, inspired by Joseph Conrad's novella "Heart of Darkness" and Dashiell Hammett's novel "Red Harvest", focused on the lengths to which people would go to survive through terrible circumstances. The game was built using Dunia, a game engine created by Ubisoft based on the original game's CryEngine. In pursuit of realism, the developers added real-time and reactive elements for enemies and the environment. The music, composed by Marc Canham, includes vocals by Senegalese singer Baaba Maal.


title: Far Cry 2

text: "Far Cry 2" received positive reviews from critics, with praise for its setting, open-ended gameplay, Buddies, world design and visuals; however its writing, artificial intelligence and technical issues received negative attention. It received multiple game award nominations. By January 2009, the game had sold nearly three million copies worldwide. "Far Cry 2" has continued to receive attention for its ambition and survival mechanics. The team used feedback from the game to develop "Far Cry 3" (2012).


title: Far Cry 2

text: "Far Cry 2" is a first-person shooter in which players take control of a mercenary in an unnamed fictional East African nation in the middle of a civil war. The playable character is selected from a pool of nine available mercenaries; the remaining eight and some other non-playable mercenary characters are distributed through the world once the game starts. The environment covers a variety of terrain, ranging from desert to savannah to jungle. The mercenary has access to a selection of thirty firearms including pistols, assault rifles, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, and mortars. He can also use a machete for melee kills. Many missions in "Far Cry 2" involve storming or infiltrating encampments, many of which contain supplies. The mercenary can adopt a frontal assault, or approach and carry out their mission using stealth, in addition to there being a number of different options within these approaches for completing a mission.


title: Far Cry 2

text: After the opening tutorial area, the mercenary is allowed to roam freely through the game's open world environment, completing main story missions and side missions for both the game's major factions and a third independent group, the Underground, in neutral town areas. The other mercenaries found in the open world are dubbed Buddies, and can be either found in settlements or held captive by one of the factions. Depending on interactions, players have a Best and Second Best Buddy, who when a mission is accepted will call up to offer optional information and support in combat. If Buddies are injured on missions and not healed in time, they die and will be permanently removed from the rest of the game. The player can save their progress in safe houses captured from enemy forces; the PlayStation 3 (PS3) and Xbox 360 (360) versions only allow saves in safe houses, while the Microsoft Windows version allows the player to save anywhere. At safe houses, the mercenary can rest and advance the in-game time using his watch.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The player's health is represented by a bar showing five sections, which do not regenerate if depleted completely. Once health drops to one bar, a critical state is entered and the heal function triggers a cutscene where the mercenary manually treats their injuries. If the mercenary falls, their Second Best Buddy will appear to save them and try to get them to safety, but if they are shot down again the game ends and must be restarted from an earlier save. Health can only be restored either through picking up water bottles or using syrettes, of which the mercenary carries a limited number. From the outset of the game, the mercenary is suffering from malaria, which strikes at regular intervals and causes disorientation and blurring vision. The malarial fits must be treated with medicine, which can only be gained from the Underground by completing missions for them. Over the course of the game, the mercenary's actions increase their Reputation, which unlocks more missions but also causes the Underground to mistrust him, making the medicine harder to acquire.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The mercenary can navigate the world on foot, travel between safe zones using bus routes, and use vehicles to travel including jeeps and quadbikes, boats for rivers, and a hang glider. Navigation is helped using a map and handheld GPS, in addition to other devices such as a locator for caches of the in-game currency blood diamonds. If a vehicle is damaged during combat, it must be repaired. Outside safe zones, the mercenary will be attacked when in range of any hostile group. A notable element of the open world is realistic physics and environmental effects, such as fire spreading through an area if lit and dust storms causing decreased visibility. Enemies are also designed to react and adapt based on the mercenary's tactics and their current reputation. Several species of animals can be encountered in the game, and are able to distract the enemy as well as make them aware of the player's presence. Equipment and weapons can only be purchased using blood diamonds, otherwise needing to be scavenged from the environment and defeated enemies. Scavenged guns will degrade over time, eventually jamming briefly and needing to be freed up to work again, or permanently and needing to be discarded.


title: Far Cry 2

text: Alongside the single player campaign, "Far Cry 2" included a separate competitive online multiplayer mode, with teams of up to four players taking sides in the conflict and competing over objectives. Multiplayer gameplay was class based, with six classes available, and incorporated the same physics and environment elements as the main game. The available modes included two types of Deathmatch, a version of Capture the flag where players fight over control of a large blood diamond, and "Uprising", where team captains must capture nodes. Matches were ranked, with the winning team earning rewards based on their score. All versions include a map editor for creating multiplayer levels. It allows players to craft terrain, ranging from rocky areas to water pathways, and place shrubbery and buildings in available areas. Levels were shared online through the internet for Windows, and on consoles through PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. The online functions ended in June 2021 when Ubisoft closed down servers for its older titles.


title: Far Cry 2

text: In the wake of a rebellion against the old government of an unnamed East African nation, civil war rages between the rebel forces' two political factions, the United Front for Liberation and Labour (UFLL) and the Alliance for Popular Resistance (APR). While each claims to represent the people, they are equally brutal and exploitative with the civilian population. The situation is being worsened by the Jackal, an arms dealer distributing efficient low-price weapons to both sides in violation of a Joint Signatory Framework designed to stop the conflict escalating. The protagonist is one of a mercenary team sent into the country to kill the Jackal.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The mercenary arrives at a local town, only to succumb to malarial fever. The Jackal confronts him with his assumed failure, but does not kill him, leaving the mercenary to be incapacitated during an ambush on the town. The mercenary is rescued by members of the one of the factions, and ends up going on missions for both sides in the hope of catching up with the Jackal. He also meets Reuben Oluwagembi, a journalist covering the conflict, and after aiding him gains access to malarial medicine through the Underground network, which works to save the civilian population from the activities of the UFLL and APR. During one mission to assassinate the leader of one side, the mercenary's employer betrays and nearly kills him, only for the Jackal to help him escape. Interactions with the Jackal, together with interview tapes that can be found in-game, reveal his disillusionment with the conflict.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The Jackal eventually confronts the mercenary, proposing they work together to save the civilians, and the mercenary is tasked with killing the UFLL and APR leaders. After killing the leaders, the mercenary meets with the Jackal, who reveals the factions are still hunting the civilians to either kill them or trap them in the country. He intends to bribe the border guards to let the civilians through while using explosives to prevent the soldiers' pursuit. The mercenary is given the choice of detonating the explosives at the cost of his life, or bribing the guards and then committing suicide, with the Jackal taking the other job. Post-credit dialogue reveals the country descends into anarchy despite attempted peace talks, Reuben's story is ignored by the press and he begins publishing it on his blog, the Underground is praised for its action saving civilians, and the Jackal's body is never found.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The original "Far Cry" was developed by Crytek using their in-house CryEngine and published by Ubisoft. "Far Cry" released in 2004, the same year Crytek signed a deal with Electronic Arts to produce a new CryEngine title, leaving them unable to work on future "Far Cry" projects. Ubisoft struck a deal with CryTek and eventually purchased the "Far Cry" intellectual property, allowing their Ubisoft Montreal studio to create further console "Far Cry" games using CryEngine technology. The aim with "Far Cry 2" was to "rejuvenate" the "Far Cry" universe using a new setting and mechanics. The shift in direction was partly to separate it from Crytek's new project, which was assumed be set in a similar tropical environment, but also to separate it from the original game's console spin-off titles, which all had similar environments. The change in setting and direction would also help invigorate the brand, which was suffering in the market due to exploitation of the original game's premise and tone. There was also the factor that several games and other media titles were using a jungle island setting. The team went through a long pre-production period, with plans for a sequel emerging prior to the original game's release and concept work beginning during the development of "Far Cry Instincts" (2005). Production lasted three and a half years.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The game was directed by Clint Hocking, and co-produced by Bertrand Hélias and Louis-Pierre Pharand. Hocking joined the project after finishing his work on "", choosing "Far Cry 2" to take a break from the "Splinter Cell" series. The lead designer was Pierre Rivest, who described the experience as challenging due to having no other games as comparisons for the mechanics and scale of "Far Cry 2". Gathering staff for the project was difficult, as production of "Far Cry 2" ran parallel to or behind two other large-scale Ubisoft Montreal projects, "Assassin's Creed" and "". According to narrative designer Patrick Redding, he and Hocking agreed to "go all out" on their vision regardless of its success. The final production team included over 150 staff members, the assembly of which was described by Pharand as a huge challenge.


title: Far Cry 2

text: Upon its original unveiling, "Far Cry 2" was announced as a Windows-exclusive development. After returning from a media event in Leipzig, another team came to them and said they could get the engine working on PS3 and 360. Impressed by their tests, the game was scheduled for those consoles in turn. Another impetus to establish the engine on consoles was so other Ubisoft titles could make use of it in the future, and to push what was possible on consoles at the time. While there were technological limitations on the console versions due to preset hardware specifications, the Windows version was described as having no limitations. Technical director Dominic Guay stated that the only real difference between the Windows and console versions was its graphics, with the two otherwise being identical. They also took care not to make their game too demanding on Windows machines, contrasting against the notoriously high demands of Crytek's "Crysis". The PS3 version caused worries for the team due to its notorious reputation as a difficult console for third-party developers, but a dedicated team of programmers worked to smooth over gameplay on the console.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The team started out with the basic CryEngine technology. In order to create their intended open world environment, they repurposed the old engine and created their own, dubbing it Dunia. The team "gutted" the old engine, rewriting and replacing an estimated 90 percent of the code. Engine development ran parallel to game development, resulting in "constantly shifting budgets" and regular adjustment of the gameplay, with the goal being to be able to create a square kilometer of game terrain in one day. They also designed a dedicated animation system called LivePosture, which controlled the movement of vegetation and the environment. Guay insisted at the outset of development that the game prompt the creation of new design tools rather than relying on existing tools. The team made use of Procedural Data Generation to handle the in-game environment and reactions, cutting down on both production time and the load on the engine. Guay planned a slow escalation of engine development, easing in new staff in small numbers to let them get experience with the engine rather than causing problems bringing in a large number of unprepared staff at once.


title: Far Cry 2

text: Hocking and Redding came up with the initial narrative concept, which tied into the game's planned setting. While the original "Far Cry" had drawn from H. G. Wells's novel "The Island of Doctor Moreau" and had a divisive science fiction-like tone in consequence, "Far Cry 2" took inspiration from Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella "Heart of Darkness", as well as the more contemporary film adaptation "Apocalypse Now" (1979). The intent was for a darker, more realistic narrative and tone. Some surreal elements were retained to enhance the chosen art design. A common theme with "Heart of Darkness" was how far people would go, and how much they would become like monsters and leverage the unhinged side of their nature, in order to survive and endure through terrible circumstances. Another influence along the same lines was the novel "Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett, where the protagonist enters a lawless city and ultimately eliminates both sides of a deadly conflict. The game's conflict drew inspiration from events around the city of Nairobi, which were seen as emblematic of conflicts in Africa. The voice acting was done by actors from or close to the ethnicity of the in-game characters, such as the faction leaders being voiced by South African actors.


title: Far Cry 2

text: Contrasted with other games at the time, the narrative did not make use of traditional cutscenes or a strict guided path. Redding described the approach as "dynamic story architecture", aiming for a systemic narrative emerging from the player's actions. This approach required a dedicated narrative designer, with Hocking successfully persuading Ubisoft's management on the importance of the role. One of Redding's priorities was incorporating elements into the game world to reinforce the character's thematic journey into madness and violence, including the option for the player to fail at objectives without derailing the narrative or requiring a reset. The narrative progress is based on the player's reputation, described as an "invisible counter" which determined in-game events, though late in production it was felt a relationship history matrix between players and NPCs would have worked better. Due to the complexity of the game, this change could not be implemented. The narrative was cited as an example of the all or nothing approach to design, citing the Buddy dynamics only working properly with all twelve being alive as an issue tackled by the team.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The script was written by Susan O'Connor, who worked on other notable video games including "BioShock", along with Armand Constantine and Ubisoft staff member Kevin Shortt. Redding described O'Connor as the principal writer for the project, saying she understood the difficulties of writing for video games compared to film and television. A common part of their interaction was each pushing back against the other on obtuse or behind-the-scenes motivations for characters that players would either never find or not understand. To aid in creating the Buddies, Ubisoft brought in Malcolm Clarke, a filmmaker known for his work on documentaries surrounding African mercenaries in the 1970s and 80s. A key part of the world and narrative design was giving the different faction leaders and lieutenants personality and narrative weight, allowing their deaths to have an impact on the world. Due to its central narrative of hunting down a target and fighting trained soldiers, the team made sure players would not be able to open fire on civilian targets, which would have undermined the narrative's themes. The strong focus on narrative stood in contrast to the original game, which was criticized for having a weak storyline. Redding described the "Far Cry" series as a "Trojan Horse brand" with low player expectations that allowed the team to be more experimental in their narrative approach.


title: Far Cry 2

text: Original "Far Cry" protagonist Jack Carver was not featured, as during test interviews players either did not remember or disliked him, so Hocking felt no need to bring him back. The player character was designed to be a blank slate through which players could become immersed, similar to Gordon Freeman from the "Half-Life" series. In line with this approach and out of a desire to promote immersion, the mercenary lead was made a silent protagonist. There was some discussion around incorporating more surreal elements, such as questioning the mercenary's grip on reality and memory of events, but these were never implemented. The Buddies were deliberately varied in age and ethnicity, reflecting real mercenaries. The Jackal was written as a contrast to the more simplistic antagonist of "Far Cry", being an amoral pragmatist who would eventually understand the damage caused by his actions and take extreme measures to rectify it. He was later described as a MacGuffin character who provided a central goal and theme for the narrative without being very personable. A further thematic element was the mercenary's morality potentially falling towards or below that of the Jackal's. While never communicated in-game, Hocking later revealed the Jackal was intended to be a version of Carver, disturbed by the trauma he suffered and turned into a major smuggler who has seen many more terrible things.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The aim of the game design, as with the narrative, was to maintain a realistic tone and style through the experience, contrasted against the original game's shift into more outlandish elements later in the narrative. Hocking wanted to incorporate the African environment, found guns jamming during combat, and show a realistic version of the land that was not clean and sterile. The development team also wanted to show a life beyond standard combat, including scenes of normal living, farming, and livestock around settlements. The player mercenary's body is kept hidden except during key scenes such as healing animations, a request from Hocking to promote player immersion in the world. The minimal tutorial section was a deliberate choice, with lead designer Pierre Rivest saying the team wanted players to naturally learn the systems and combine them in their own way. Effort went into making the controls easy to use even within the planned innovative game design. Similar to the original, the team wanted an advanced and reactive artificial intelligence (AI) for enemies and other creatures within the environment. When designing the missions to work in an open world environment, main missions were made simple and easy to understand, with only optional sub routes unlocked through other characters having fail states outside a game over.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The outposts, which respawn their enemies after a set period, were originally intended to slowly rebuild and repopulate over time, but the team changed the design as it was possible for players to empty the entire game world and become bored, in addition to technical problems implementing the system properly. Malaria was introduced to present the player's with a persistent challenge, though they had no point of reference for the mechanic and in hindsight Rivest felt they had made it too intrusive. The system was originally more severe, with the player losing gameplay control of the mercenary, but this was toned down in the final release. The game's notable death mechanic was incorporated by Hocking, who had been frustrated over harsh death penalties in the "Splinter Cell" series and wanted a less-penalizing system that allowed for recovery from mistakes while still maintaining an element of risks. The Buddy system drew inspiration from the Girlfriends of "" and soldier management in "XCOM", in addition to smaller influences from other companion systems in games including "BioShock" and "Ico". The enemy AI was designed early on as a basic system that would respond to actions in the environment or from the player, but this later meant no further AI system could be created to manage planned general behaviors outside combat.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The game's scale meant local cooperative multiplayer was not incorporated. The pressures of designing the single player and multiplayer modes alongside the engine design caused problems, forcing the team to split multiplayer development into its own team. This team had several young members, who suffered further problems under peer pressure from others within Ubisoft, requiring a design consultant to be brought in and complete the multiplayer designs, though there continued to be problems with a lack of clear design goals during the game's alpha testing period and the mode was not solidified until the beta period. The console map editor used the one designed for "Far Cry Instincts" as a template, with the team taking what they liked and rebuilding it in the new engine.


title: Far Cry 2

text: During early planning, various settings were proposed and rejected, including Antarctica and the planet Mars. Art director Alexandre Amancio had several favorites during the concept design stage. He wanted the game to use a wilderness without signs of human habitation, meaning settings in mainland Asia and South America were dropped. Japan was discarded due to a lack of environmental variety and overuse in popular media, and the American West was rejected due to its restrictive historical background limiting narrative opportunities. A setting in the Canadian West was dropped both due to difficulties creating a compelling survival setting outside stereotypes of the region and its planned use in Remedy Entertainment's "Alan Wake". The Australian outback was similar in environment to the final African setting, but its uninhabited nature made interactions and conflict difficult to justify. The variety of environments available for use helped make Africa the final choice, as well as the ability to incorporate the presence of malaria and use of blood diamonds as currency into the design.


title: Far Cry 2

text: It was decided not to set the game in a real country, so as not to limit the in-game environmental variety. When thinking about a region to emulate in-game, the team opted for Kenya due to its variety of environments both within and around its borders with Uganda, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. In July 2007, Ubisoft sent a team of the game's developers to Africa to carry out research for the game. Their research took them to Kenya and parts of Tanzania, chosen due to their variety of environments and political stability. They spent two weeks traveling around the region and camping out on the savanna. The team chose to camp rather than stay in a hotel, desiring an authentic experience. The field trip allowed them to observe the local architecture and environment first-hand, in addition to their guides telling them about the local vegetation and weather cycles. Amancio estimated that they obtained about 40 hours of footage and over eight gigabytes of photographic reference material. Another element highlighted by Amancio was the amount of animal droppings they saw, which they took care to incorporate into the game's visual identity. Pharand said that following the trip, they realized they had gotten the design of the game "so wrong" and made several changes to properly emulate the local environment.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The only African wildlife featured in the game world were herbivores; according to the developers, due to the in-game world design, predators without careful control would have eaten all the herbivores and starved to death. The team also wanted to make hunting an unenjoyable experience that would force the players to focus on the main game content. The size of the game world made testing for bugs difficult, with Hocking later saying they should have made it smaller. NPC conversations incorporated seen and recounted anecdotes from their field trip. A large portion of the in-game ambience was recorded live during the field trip. The character animations were considered a low priority due to the game's genre, so no animation director was appointed. In hindsight, Hocking saw this as a poor choice due to its ambitious graphical presentation and lack of traditional UI.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The music of "Far Cry 2" was composed by Marc Canham, who was best known at the time for his work on the "Driver" series. He worked alongside the Nimrod Production Orchestra, a group he founded as part of his production company. When Canham was contacted about the project, he was asked to create a score that did something "new and exciting". In keeping with this wish, he ignored the musical style of the original "Far Cry". Compared to other projects he had worked on, there were no equivalent games and soundtracks to reference for "Far Cry 2", so the music team were left to make their own judgements about the sound balance. Their early prototypes were rejected by Ubisoft for being bombastic and overly loud, so Canham shifted the score to focus on ambience. Creating the music required balancing the game's two conflicting elements as an action-based shooter with an emotional sombre narrative. He created a less bombastic score than other shooters of the time, using a string sextet supported by African percussion instruments; the latter included djembes, udus and kalimbas. Based on their research, the team focused on the Ashiko along with Kundabigoya and Coucou rhythms as the core of the game's soundtrack.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The music was recorded using a small ensemble of live players, again going against conventions of the time which relied on large orchestras or electronic and synthetic soundtracks. The cuing and mixing done live during recording using an MPC 2000. The string music was recorded at Abbey Road Studios. A notable contributor to the soundtrack is Senegalese singer Baaba Maal, who recorded both full vocals and tribal chant-like elements to incorporate into the soundtrack. He visited Abbey Road, received a four-hour "crash course" on the game's music, and impressed Canham with his performance as their previous contact had been remote and sporadic due to Maal's touring commitments. The main theme incorporated both Maal and the sextet. Only three percussion tracks were recorded at any one time, giving them time and leeway to separate and mix the different tracks. Final mastering was done at Abby Roads.


title: Far Cry 2

text: A digital soundtrack album was published by Ubisoft through iTunes on October 21, 2008. As part of the game's promotion, another album titled "African Swim" was released on October 20 as a free download by Adult Swim. A co-production by Ubisoft and Adult Swim, the album focused exclusively on music by South African musicians including Gumshev and Maggz. The album also included behind-the-scenes footage of the game's production.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The existence of "Far Cry 2" was first hinted in September 2006 through a leak of screenshots, artwork and video footage of several in-production titles. It was officially announced for PC in July 2007, though it was hinted through online store listings before that. The console versions were announced in January 2008. The game's complexity made creating a commercial game demo impractical, so the team instead focused that effort into further polishing the final product. For piracy protection, the Windows version made use of SecuROM digital rights management, with limited version installs across up to three devices with repeated installs possible provided earlier versions were removed. The game was compatible with the amBX peripheral designed by Philips, allowing greater immersion into the game's world through light and vibrations. Production was completed on October 14, 2008, when Ubisoft Montreal declared the game had gone gold.


title: Far Cry 2

text: "Far Cry 2" was released in North America on October 21, 2008. It subsequently released on Ocrtober 23 in Australia, and October 24 in Europe. Alongside the standard edition, limited editions were released in North America and Europe. The GameStop-exclusive Pre-Order Edition came with a real-world map of the game's world and six additional in-game missions. The GAME-exclusive European version contained an artbook, a behind-the-scenes DVD, a guidebook, and the map. "Far Cry 2" was reissued on February 21, 2014, as part of a bundle for Windows and its consoles as part of "Far Cry: The Wild Expedition", a compilation of all "Far Cry" titles up to that point. It was also made backwards compatible with the Xbox One on January 17, 2018.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The console versions were published in Japan by Ubisoft's local branch. The 360 version was released on November 21, and the PS3 version on December 25. The Windows version, which included a translated manual, was published by E Frontier on December 12. A version for mobile phones was developed and published by Gameloft, releasing in 2008 after the PC and console versions. This version was reworked as a top-down third-person shooter, with the mercenary undergoing a series of ten missions.


title: Far Cry 2

text: As part of its promotion for PS3, environments themed after "Far Cry 2" were released through PlayStation Home. Ubisoft eventually updated the game so multiplayer matches could be launched through Home. In November, a downloadable content bundle dubbed "Fortune's Pack" was released. It included three new weapons, an Exploding Crossbow, Ceremonial Shotgun, and Silenced Shotgun; vehicles, including a utility truck and ATV; and five new multiplayer maps. Ubisoft released three software patches between November 2008 and June 2009, fixing bugs and balancing in the single player and multiplayer campaigns, a higher gameplay difficulty option, in addition to adjustments to the map editor and how the game used hardware. The later patch also allowed the PC version to launch without needing the game disc.


title: Far Cry 2

text: A prequel novel, "FarCry 2: Blutige Diamanten" ("Far Cry 2: Blood Diamonds"), was written by Michael Bhatty and published as a German exclusive on May 21, 2008, by Panini Comics. The storyline focuses on veterinarian Paula as she struggles to survive in the middle of the civil war when she comes into possession of important information. Bhatty wrote the book in parallel with a novelization of the original game, using the first book to introduce characters who were featured in "Blutige Diamanten". These characters were Marty Alencar, one of the playable mercenaries, and ex-CIA Zam agent who was a novel-exclusive character. Other mercenary characters from the main game were also included. He was given access to the game's assets to write the novel, though since it was early in production there were some differences such as Reuben's name. The different names were rationalized as Reuben using a pseudonym to protect himself. The characters were all given names native to Central and South Africa, with meanings related to their narrative role. Protagonist Paula was inspired by a namesake in the television series "Daktari" and the video game protagonist Lara Croft.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The Windows version was the best-selling game in North America during its opening week. The 360 version was fourth, while the PS3 version was fifth. According to a report by the NPD Group, "Far Cry 2" was the fifteenth best-selling Windows game during November 2008. By November 12, the game had sold one million copies worldwide across all platforms. Sales were up to 2.9 million by the following January. "Far Cry 2" met with generally positive reviews from gaming journalists. On review aggregator website Metacritic, the Windows and console version were given scores of 85 points out of 100; the score was based on 34 reviews for Windows, 49 for PS3, and 75 for 360.


title: Far Cry 2

text: Thierry Nguyen of "1Up.com" said it qualified as one of the best shooters of 2008 despite many small problems with its gameplay balance, and "Edge Magazine" enjoyed the main gameplay and praised the twist ending's match with the overall theme. Christian Donlan of "Eurogamer" called it "a game that was born to struggle with itself", noting several elements that clashed with its aesthetic and enjoyable gameplay structure. "Game Informer"s Matt Miller found the game's basic combat fairly weak, but otherwise praised its design and player freedom, citing the emotional connection developed with the Buddies as a highlight. Shaun McInnis of "GameSpot" was positive about the amount of content and freedom offered to players when approaching different missions.


title: Far Cry 2

text: "GamePro" gave the title a perfect score in its review, calling it one of the best shooters on the market while noting its scale might be off-putting to genre veterans. Dave Kosak of "GameSpy" gave most of his praise to the open combat design, faulting the open world traversal and lack of clear character motivations. "GameTrailers" positively noted its ambitious design and realistic feel compared to its predecessor, noting it felt good to play on both consoles and PC. Reviewing all three versions, "IGN"s Charles Onyett lauded the gameplay and graphics, giving the PC version a higher score due to its better graphical performance. "PlayStation Official Magazine – UK"s Leon Hurley gave high praise to its design and aesthetic despite some minor criticisms of its technical performance and lack of in-game guidance. Cameron Lewis of "Official Xbox Magazine" praised the variety of approaches the gameplay allowed. John Blyth for "PC Zone" was almost universally positive about the game's mechanics and aesthetic, but faulted the voice acting and general hostility of NPCs towards the player. Tim Edwards, writing for "PC Gamer", praised its world design and open-ended gameplay despite being underwhelmed by the narrative delivery.


title: Far Cry 2

text: Reaction to the story and tone was generally positive, though several reviewers cited problems with its delivery and handling of its themes. The pace and tone of dialogue was also questioned by Miller, Onyett and Blyth. The basic combat and open gameplay approach met with a generally positive response. When mentioned, the vehicle travel and combat saw mixed reactions. The Buddies received positive comments for both their mechanical and narrative contributions. The malaria mechanic saw a mixed to negative response from some critics, though Blyth and "GameTrailers" praised it as an innovative mechanic. Many reviewers criticized the AI for erratic behavior. The multiplayer was generally praised as an enjoyable if standard element. The game's aesthetics were enjoyed where mentioned despite some technical issues, though Donlan was disappointed that some of the game-centered aesthetic design undermined the otherwise realistic atmosphere. The PC version met with general praise, though all reviews noted the high hardware requirements to run the game properly. The mobile adaptation met with favorable reviews, with "Pocket Gamer" praising it as a strong game in its own right and "IGN" enjoying it despite finding it inferior to the console and PC versions.


title: Far Cry 2

text: The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated "Far Cry 2" as "Action Game of the Year". It was nominated in the "Best Shooter" at the 2008 Spike Video Game Awards. Also in 2008, game was nominated in the "Graphics/Technical" category at the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers ceremony. At the 2009 Game Developers Choice Awards, it was nominated in the "Game Design" and "Writing" categories. In the book "Gaming and the Arts of Storytelling", Darshana Jayemanne noted the game's many thematic and narrative parallels to "Heart of Darkness", citing it as a good example of interactive storytelling. Chris Remo, in an opinion piece for "Gamasutra", noted that "Far Cry 2" rewarded thoughtful and slower-paced gameplay, praising it for providing an environment where players could create their own experiences.


title: Far Cry 2

text: In an article ranking all entries in the "Far Cry" series in 2021, "Game Informer" ranked "Far Cry 2" as eighth, with the writer calling it "black sheep of the family, beloved by just as many as those who hate it." "Polygon"s Austen Goslin called it a game ahead of its time due to its mechanics and themes. Doc Burford of "USGamer" noted its ambition and cited it as an example of diegetic storytelling through its gameplay mechanics. Phil Hornshaw, writing for "Digital Trends", noted its dated nature in some areas and problems with its mechanics, but found it superior to several later entries due to its immersion and tone. Marsh Davies of "Rock Paper Shotgun" lauded it as the best entry in the series despite its flaws, calling the journey "painful, arduous but unforgettable". Both Goslin and Davies compared the difficulty to the later "Dark Souls" series.


title: Far Cry 2

text: Ubisoft Montreal continued as lead developer for the series, beginning production on a sequel titled "Far Cry 3", which was released in 2012. This sequel would return to the first game's tropical setting, either discarding or polishing gameplay elements that saw a mixed reaction from "Far Cry 2" while improving the core gameplay. The Jackal, despite his mixed reputation among series fans going forward, was the beginning of a trend for leading charismatic antagonists taking a prominent role in the story and marketing. "Far Cry 2" was the first major release to use Ubisoft's eventually-common design philosophy of sustainable franchises with large open worlds on next-generation gaming hardware. This formula would be embraced by later "Far Cry" games, the "Assassin's Creed" franchise, and properties based on the work of Tom Clancy.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: King Solomon's Mines (1885) is a popular novel by the English Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party. It is one of the first English adventure novels set in Africa and is considered to be the genesis of the lost world literary genre.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: The book was first published in September 1885 amid considerable fanfare, with billboards and posters around London announcing "The Most Amazing Book Ever Written". It became an immediate best seller. By the late 19th century, explorers were uncovering ancient civilisations and their remains around the world, such as Egypt's Valley of the Kings and the empire of Assyria. Inner Africa remained largely unexplored and "King Solomon's Mines", one of the first novels of African adventure published in English, captured the public's imagination.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: The "King Solomon" of the book's title is the legendary Biblical king renowned both for his wisdom and for his wealth. A number of sites have been suggested as the location of his mines, including the workings at the Timna valley near Eilat. Research published in September 2013 has shown that this site was in use during the 10th century BCE as a copper mine possibly by the Edomites, who, the Bible reports, were rivals of and frequently at war with King Solomon. The Bible does refer to King Solomon having sent out, in partnership with his Phoenician allies, trading expeditions along the Red Sea, which brought exotic wares and animals from Africa to Jerusalem. Muslim traders in Sofala told Portuguese travellers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the region's gold mines belonged to King Solomon and that he built the now-ruined Great Zimbabwe.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: Haggard knew Africa well, having travelled deep within the continent during the Anglo-Zulu War and the First Boer War, where he had been impressed by South Africa's vast mineral wealth and by the ruins of ancient lost cities, such as Great Zimbabwe, being uncovered. His original Allan Quatermain character was based in large part on Frederick Selous, the British white hunter and explorer of Africa. Selous's real-life experiences provided Haggard with the background and inspiration for this and many later stories.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: Haggard also owed a considerable debt to Joseph Thomson, the Scottish explorer whose book "Through Masai Land" was published in 1885. Thomson claimed he had terrified warriors in Kenya by taking out his false teeth and claiming to be a magician, just as Captain Good does in "King Solomon's Mines". Contemporary James Runciman wrote an article entitled "King Plagiarism and His Court", interpreted as accusing Haggard of plagiarism for this. Thomson was so outraged at Haggard's alleged plagiarism that he published a novel of his own, "Ulu: an African Romance", which, however, failed to sell.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: Allan Quatermain, an adventurer and white hunter based in Durban, in what is now South Africa, is approached by aristocrat Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good, seeking his help finding Sir Henry's brother, who was last seen travelling north into the unexplored interior on a quest for the fabled King Solomon's Mines. Quatermain has a mysterious map purporting to lead to the mines, but had never taken it seriously. However, he agrees to lead an expedition in return for a share of the treasure, or a stipend for his son if he is killed along the way. He has little hope they will return alive, but reasons that he has already outlived most people in his profession, so dying in this manner at least ensures that his son will be provided for. They also take along a mysterious native, Umbopa, who seems more regal, handsome and well-spoken than most porters of his class, but who is very anxious to join the party.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: Travelling by oxcart, they reach the edge of a desert, but not before a hunt in which a wounded elephant claims the life of a servant. They continue on foot across the desert, almost dying of thirst before finding the oasis shown halfway across on the map. Reaching a mountain range called Suliman Berg, they climb a peak (one of "Sheba's Breasts") and enter a cave where they find the frozen corpse of José Silvestre (also spelt Silvestra), the 16th-century Portuguese explorer who drew the map in his own blood. That night, a second servant dies from the cold, so they leave his body next to Silvestra's, to "give him a companion".


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: They cross the mountains into a raised valley, lush and green, known as Kukuanaland. The inhabitants have a well-organised army and society and speak an ancient dialect of IsiZulu. Kukuanaland's capital is Loo, the destination of a magnificent road from ancient times. The city is dominated by a central royal kraal.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: They soon meet a party of Kukuana warriors who are about to kill them when Captain Good nervously fidgets with his false teeth, making the Kukuanas recoil in fear. Thereafter, to protect themselves, they style themselves "white men from the stars"—sorcerer-gods—and are required to give regular proof of their divinity, considerably straining both their nerves and their ingenuity.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: They are brought before King Twala, who rules over his people with ruthless violence. He came to power years before when he murdered his brother, the previous king, and drove his brother's wife and infant son, Ignosi, out into the desert to die. Twala's rule is unchallenged. An evil, impossibly ancient hag named Gagool is his chief advisor. She roots out any potential opposition by ordering regular witch hunts and murdering without trial all those identified as traitors. When she singles out Umbopa for this fate, it takes all of Quatermain's skill to save his life.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: Gagool, it appears, has already sensed what Umbopa soon after reveals: he is Ignosi, the rightful king of the Kukuanas. A rebellion breaks out, the Englishmen gaining support for Ignosi by taking advantage of their foreknowledge of a lunar eclipse to claim that they will black out the moon as proof of Ignosi's claim. (In early editions, this was a solar eclipse; Haggard changed it after realising that his description of a solar eclipse was not realistic). The Englishmen join Ignosi's army in a furious battle. Although outnumbered, the rebels overthrow Twala, and Sir Henry lops off his head in a duel.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: The Englishmen also capture Gagool, who reluctantly leads them to King Solomon's Mines. She shows them a treasure room inside a mountain, carved deep within the living rock and full of gold, diamonds, and ivory. She then treacherously sneaks out while they are admiring the hoard and triggers a secret mechanism that closes the mine's vast stone door. However, a brief scuffle with a beautiful Kukuana woman named Foulata—who had become attached to Good after nursing him through his injuries sustained in the battle—causes Gagool to be crushed under the stone door, though not before fatally stabbing Foulata. Their scant store of food and water rapidly dwindling, the trapped men prepare to die also. After a few despairing days sealed in the dark chamber, they find an escape route, bringing with them a few pocketfuls of diamonds from the immense trove, enough to make them rich.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: The Englishmen bid farewell to a sorrowful Ignosi and return to the desert, assuring him that they value his friendship but must return to be with their own people, Ignosi in return promising them that they will be venerated and honoured among his people forever. Taking a different route, they find Sir Henry's brother stranded in an oasis by a broken leg, unable to go forward or back. They return to Durban and eventually to England, wealthy enough to live comfortable lives.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: Haggard wrote the novel as a result of a five-shilling wager with his brother, who said that he could not write a novel half as good as Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" (1883). He wrote it in a short time, somewhere between six and sixteen weeks between January and 21 April 1885. However, the book was a complete novelty and was rejected by one publisher after another. After six months, "King Solomon's Mines" was published, and the book became the year's best seller, with printers struggling to print copies fast enough.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: Andrew Lang, reviewing "King Solomon's Mines" for the "Saturday Review", praised the book. Lang described the book as a "peculiarly thrilling and vigorous tale of adventure" and added "we have only praise for the very remarkable and uncommon powers of invention and gift of "vision" which Mr. Haggard displays".


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: In the process, "King Solomon's Mines" created a new genre known as the "Lost World", which would inspire Edgar Rice Burroughs' "The Land That Time Forgot", Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World", Rudyard Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King" and H. P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness". In "The Return of Tarzan" (1913), Edgar Rice Burroughs introduced his own lost city of "Opar", in which the influence of "King Solomon's Mines" is evident. (Burroughs' Opar is supposedly the same as the Biblical Ophir with which King Solomon traded.) Opar reappeared in further Tarzan novels and was later taken up in the Khokarsa novels of Philip José Farmer and various derivative works in other media. Burroughs also introduced other lost cities in various hidden corners of Africa for Tarzan to visit, such as a valley inhabited by stray Crusaders still maintaining a Medieval way of life. Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian also visited several lost cities, and Lee Falk's "The Phantom" was initially written in this genre. A much later Lost World novel is Michael Crichton's "Congo", which is set in the 1970s and features characters seeking a trove of diamonds in the lost city of Zinj for use in electronic components rather than jewellery.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: As in "Treasure Island", the narrator of "King Solomon's Mines" tells his tale in the first person, in an easy conversational style. Almost entirely missing (except in the speech of the Kukuanas) is the ornate language usually associated with novels of this era. Haggard's use of the first-person subjective perspective also contrasts with the omniscient third-person viewpoint then in vogue among influential writers such as Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, and George Eliot.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: The book has scholarly value for the colonialist attitudes that Haggard expresses, and for the way that he portrays the relationships between the white and African characters. Haggard portrays some African characters, such as Twala and Gagool, as barbarians but their barbarity has more to do with their roles as antagonists in the story than with their African heritage. He also presents the other side of the coin, showing some black Africans (such as Ignosi) as heroes and heroines, and shows respect for their culture. The book expresses much less prejudice than some of the later books in this genre. Indeed, Quatermain stated that he refused to use the word "nigger" and that many Africans are more worthy of the title of "gentleman" than the Europeans who settle or adventure in the country. Haggard even included an interracial romance between a Kukuana woman, Foulata, and the white Englishman Captain Good. The narrator tries to discourage the relationship, dreading the uproar that such a marriage would cause back home; however, he has no objection to the lady, whom he considers very beautiful and noble. Haggard eventually kills off Foulata, who dies in Good's arms.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: Kukuanaland is said in the book to be forty leagues north of the Lukanga river, in modern-day Zambia, which would place it in the extreme southeast of the present Democratic Republic of Congo. The culture of the Kukuanas shares many attributes with the Zulus, such as the Zulu language being spoken and the kraal system being used.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: The novel has been adapted to film at least seven times. The first cinema adaptation (a silent film version) was directed by Horace Lisle Lucoque in 1919, followed by the first sound version in 1937, "King Solomon's Mines", which was directed by Robert Stevenson. The best known version premiered in 1950, "King Solomon's Mines", directed by Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton, which was followed by a sequel, "Watusi" (1959). In 1979, a low-budget version was directed by Alvin Rakoff, "King Solomon's Treasure", combining both "King Solomon's Mines" as well as "Allan Quatermain" in one story. The 1985 film, "King Solomon's Mines", was a more tongue-in-cheek parody of the story, followed by a sequel in the same vein: "Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold" (1987). Around the same period, an Australian animated TV film came out, "King Solomon's Mines". In December 2006, the movie, "" was released as the second in a trilogy that follows one man’s fantastical adventures. In 2008, a direct-to-video adaptation, "Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls" was released by Mark Atkins, which bore more resemblance to Indiana Jones than the novel.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: In 2002, a documentary was made by National Geographic Television in collaboration with Channel 4 in the UK: "The Search for King Solomon's Mines".


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: In 2004, "King Solomon's Mines", a two-part TV mini-series starring Patrick Swayze as Allan Quatermain, aired on the Hallmark Channel.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: A two-part BBC Radio 4 adaptation was broadcast in April 2017 starring Tim McInnerny as Allan Quatermain.


title: King Solomon's Mines

text: "King Solomon's Mines" was the sixth episode of "The General Mills Radio Adventure Theater", broadcast on 20 February 1977.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Forty acres and a mule was part of Special Field Orders No. 15, a wartime order proclaimed by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on January 16, 1865, during the American Civil War, to allot land to some freed families, in plots of land no larger than . Sherman later ordered the army to lend mules for the agrarian reform effort. The field orders followed a series of conversations between Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Radical Republican abolitionists Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens following disruptions to the institution of slavery provoked by the American Civil War. Many freed people believed, after being told by various political figures, that they had a right to own the land they had been forced to work as slaves and were eager to control their own property. Freed people widely expected to legally claim 40 acres of land. However, Abraham Lincoln's successor as president, Andrew Johnson, tried to reverse the intent of Sherman's wartime Order No. 15 and similar provisions included in the second Freedmen's Bureau bills.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Some land redistribution occurred under military jurisdiction during the war and for a brief period thereafter. However, federal and state policy during the Reconstruction era emphasized wage labor, not land ownership, for black people. Almost all land allocated during the war was restored to its pre-war white owners. Several black communities did maintain control of their land, and some families obtained new land by homesteading. Black land ownership increased markedly in Mississippi during the 19th century, particularly. The state had much undeveloped bottomland (low-lying alluvial land near a river) behind riverfront areas that had been cultivated before the war. Most black people acquired land through private transactions, with ownership peaking at or ~23,000 square miles in 1910, before an extended financial recession caused problems that resulted in the loss of property for many.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: A 2020 study contrasted the successful distribution of free land to former slaves in the Cherokee Nation with the failure to give free land to former slaves in the Confederacy. The study found that even though levels of inequality in 1860 were similar in the Cherokee Nation and the Confederacy, former black slaves prospered in the Cherokee Nation over the next decades. The Cherokee Nation had lower levels of racial inequality, higher incomes for black people, higher literacy rates among black people, and greater school attendance rates among black people.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: The institution of slavery in the United States deprived multiple generations of the opportunity to own land. Legally slaves could not own anything, but in practice they did acquire capital, although they were considered the lowest-ranking members of the capitalist system. As legal slavery came to an end, many freed people fully expected to gain ownership of the land they had worked, as some abolitionists had led them to expect.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: African Americans faced severe discrimination and were maintained as a distinct "racial" group by laws requiring racial segregation and prohibiting so-called "miscegenation". Perceived as a job-stealing threat to society—they were a downward force on wages since they usually would work for less than whites—and even more as a dangerous influence on those who remained enslaved, free Negroes were unwelcome in most areas of the United States. Before the Civil War, most free blacks lived in the North, which had abolished slavery. In some places they acquired substantial real estate.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: In the South, vagrancy laws had allowed the states to force free Negroes into labor, and sometimes to sell them into slavery. Nevertheless, free Africans across the country performed a variety of occupations, and a small number owned and operated successful farms. Others settled in Upper Canada (now Southern Ontario), an endpoint of the Underground Railroad, and in Nova Scotia.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Whites did not agree on how freed people ought to be treated. Some maintained that the land the freedmen had farmed for no pay should be taken from their former owners and given to them. Others wanted them sent "somewhere else"; they opposed the "race"-mixing that allowing them to remain in the U.S. would bring about. Plans for a "colony" of freedmen began in 1801, when James Monroe asked President Thomas Jefferson to help create a penal colony for rebellious blacks. The American Colonization Society (ACS) formed in 1816 to address the issue of free African Americans through settlement (not resettlement) abroad. Although there was discussion of settling freedmen in some undeveloped land in the new western territories, or helping them emigrate to Canada or Mexico, the ACS decided to send them to Africa, to the closest available land (and therefore the cheapest to reach). By 1860, the ACS had settled thousands of African Americans in Liberia. But colonization was slow and expensive and of little interest to most African Americans, who had no ties with or interest in Africa, and who said they were no more African than white Americans were British. Mortality from tropical diseases was ghastly, and while the enslaved population was in the millions, settlers to Liberia were in the low thousands. As mass emancipation loomed, there was no consensus about what to do with the millions of soon-to-be-free black slaves. This issue had long been known to white authorities as "The Negro Problem".


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: The idea of a land grant to an entire class of people was not as unusual in the 18th and 19th centuries as it seems today. There was so much land that it was often given free to anyone that would farm it. For example, Thomas Jefferson proposed a grant of 50 acres to any free man who did not already have at least that much, in his draft of a revolutionary constitution for Virginia in 1776. More recently, various Homestead Acts were passed between 1862 and 1916, granting 160–640 acres (a quarter section to a full section), depending on the act, and earlier homesteading occurred under statutes such as the Preemption Act of 1841. Freedmen were not generally eligible for homesteading because they were not citizens, which changed with the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 when they were granted citizenship, and with the Fifteenth Amendment, which in 1870 gave them the right to vote.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: As the Northern Army began to seize property in its war with the South, Congress passed the Confiscation Act of 1861. This law allowed the military to seize rebel property, including land and slaves. In fact, it reflected the rapidly growing reality of black refugee camps that sprang up around the Union Army. These glaring manifestations of the "Negro Problem" provoked hostility from much of the Union rank-and-file—and necessitated administration by officers.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: After secession, the Union maintained its control over Fort Monroe in Hampton on the coast of Southern Virginia. Escaped slaves rushed to the area, hoping for protection from the Confederate Army. (Even more quickly, the town's white residents fled to Richmond.) General Benjamin Butler set a precedent for Union forces on May 24, 1861, when he refused to surrender escaped slaves to Confederates claiming ownership. Butler declared the slaves contraband of war and allowed them to remain with the Union Army. By July 1861, there were 300 "contraband" slaves working for rations at Fort Monroe. By the end of July there were 900, and General Butler appointed Edward L. Pierce as Commissioner of Negro Affairs.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Confederate raiders under General John B. Magruder burnt the nearby town of Hampton, Virginia on August 7, 1861, but the "contraband" blacks occupied its ruins. They established a shantytown known as the Grand Contraband Camp. Many worked for the Army at a rate of $10.00/month, but these wages were not sufficient for them to make major improvements in housing. Conditions in the Camp grew worse, and Northern humanitarian groups sought to intervene on behalf of its 64,000 residents. Captain C. B. Wilder was appointed to organize a response. The perceived humanitarian crisis may have hastened Lincoln's plans for colonizing Île-à-Vache.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: A plan developed in September 1862 would have relocated refugees en masse to Massachusetts and other northern states. This plan—initiated by John A. Dix and supported by Captain Wilder and Secretary of War Stanton—drew negative reactions from Republicans who wanted to avoid connecting northward black migration with the newly announced Emancipation Proclamation. Fear of competition by black workers, as well as generalized racial prejudice, made the prospect of black refugees unpalatable for Massachusetts politicians.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: With support from orders from General Rufus Saxton, General Butler and Captain Wilder pursued local resettlement operations, providing many of the blacks in Hampton with two acres of land and tools with which to work. Others were assigned jobs as servants in the North. Various smaller camps and colonies were formed, including the Freedmen's Colony of Roanoke Island. Hampton was well known as one of the War's first and biggest refugee camps, and served as a sort of model for other settlements.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: The Union Army occupied the Sea Islands after the November 1861 Battle of Port Royal, leaving the area's many cotton plantations to the black farmers who worked on them. The early liberation of the Sea Island blacks, and the relatively unusual absence of the former white masters, raised the issue of how the South might be organized after the fall of slavery. Lincoln, commented State Department official Adam Gurowski, "is frightened with the success in South Carolina, as in his opinion this success will complicate the question of slavery." In the early days of federal occupation, troops were badly mistreating the island's residents, and had raided plantation supplies of food and clothing. One Union officer was caught preparing to secretly transport a group of blacks to Cuba, in order to sell them as slaves. Abuses by Union troops continued even after a stable regime had been established.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase had in December deployed Colonel William H. Reynolds to collect and sell whatever cotton could be confiscated from the Sea Island plantations. Soon after, Chase deployed Edward Pierce (after his brief period at Grand Contraband Camp) to assess the situation in Port Royal. Pierce found a plantation under strict Army control, paying wages too low to enable economic independence; he also criticized the Army's policy of shipping cotton North to be ginned. Pierce reported that the black workers were experts in cotton farming but required white managers "to enforce a paternal discipline". He recommended the establishment of a supervised black farming collective to prepare the workers for the responsibilities of citizenship—and to serve as a model for post-slavery labor relations in the South.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: The Treasury Department sought to raise money and in many cases was already leasing occupied territories to Northern capitalists for private management. For Port Royal Colonel Thomas had already prepared an arrangement of this type; but Pierce insisted that Port Royal offered the chance to "settle a great social question": namely, whether "when properly organized, and with proper motives set before them, [blacks] will as freemen be as industrious as any race of men are likely to be in this climate." Chase sent Pierce to see President Lincoln. As Pierce later described the encounter:


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Pierce accepted this reluctant mandate, but feared that "some unhappy compromise" might compromise his plan to engineer black citizenship.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: The collective was established and became known as the Port Royal Experiment: a possible model for black economic activity after slavery. The Experiment attracted support from Northerners like economist Edward Atkinson, who hoped to prove his theory that free labor would be more productive than slave labor. More traditional abolitionists like Maria Weston Chapman also praised Pierce's plan. Civic groups like the American Missionary Association provided enthusiastic assistance. These sympathetic Northerners quickly recruited a boatload (53 chosen from a pool of applicants several times larger) of Ivy League and divinity school graduates who set off for Port Royal on March 3, 1862.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: The residents of Port Royal generally resented the military and civilian occupiers, who exhibited racist superiority in varying degrees of overtness. Joy turned to sorrow when, on May 12 Union soldiers arrived to draft all able-bodied black men previously liberated on April 13, 1862, by General David Hunter who proclaimed slavery abolished in Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama. Hunter kept his regiment even after Lincoln reversed this tri-state emancipation proclamation; but disbanded almost all of it when unable to draw payroll from the War Department. Black farmers preferred to grow vegetables and catch fish, whereas the missionaries (and other whites on the islands) encouraged monoculture of cotton as a cash crop. In the thinking of the latter, civilization would be advanced by incorporating blacks into the consumer economy dominated by Northern manufacturing.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Meanwhile, various conflicts arose among the missionaries, the Army, and the merchants whom Chase and Reynolds had invited to Port Royal in order to confiscate all that could be sold. On balance, however, the white sponsors of the Experiment had perceived positive results; businessman John Murray Forbes in May 1862 called it "a decided success", announcing that Blacks would indeed work in exchange for wages.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton appointed General Rufus Saxton as military governor of Port Royal in April 1862, and by December Saxton was agitating for permanent black control over the land. He won support from Stanton, Chase, Sumner, and President Lincoln, but met continuing resistance from a tax commission that wanted to sell the land. Saxton also received approval to train a black militia, which formally became the 1st South Carolina Volunteers on January 1, 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation legalized its existence.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: The Confiscation Act of 1862 allowed the Treasury Department to sell many captured lands on the grounds of delinquent taxes. All told, the government now claimed 76,775 acres of Sea Island land. Auditors arrived in Port Royal and began to assess the estates now occupied by blacks and missionaries. The stakes were high: the Sea Island cotton harvest represented a lucrative commodity for Northern investors to control.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Most of the whites involved in the project felt that black ownership of the land should be its final result. Saxton—along with journalists including "Free South" editor James G. Thompson, and missionaries including Methodist minister Mansfield French—lobbied hard for distribution of the land to black owners. In January 1863, Saxton unilaterally halted the Treasury Department's tax sale on the grounds of military necessity.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: The tax commissioners conducted the auction regardless, selling ten thousand acres of land. Eleven plantations went to a consortium ("The Boston Concern") headed by Edward Philbrick, who sold the land in 1865 to black farmers. One black farming collective outbid the outside investors, paying an average of $7.00 per acre for the 470 plantation on which they already lived and worked. Overall, the majority of the land was sold to Northern investors and remained under their control.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: In September 1863, Lincoln announced a plan to auction 60,000 acres of South Carolina land in lots of 320 acres—setting aside 16,000 acres of the land for "heads of families of the African race", who could obtain 20-acre lots sold at $1.25/acre (). Tax Commissioner William Brisbane envisioned racial integration on the islands, with large plantation owners employing landless blacks. But Saxton and French considered the 16,000-acre reserve to be inadequate, and instructed black families to stake claims and build houses on all 60,000 acres of the land. French traveled to Washington in December 1863 to lobby for legal confirmation of the plan. At French's urging, Chase and Lincoln authorized Sea Island families (and solitary wives of soldiers in the Union Army) to claim 40-acre plots. Other individuals over the age of 21 would be allowed to claim 20 acres. These plots would be purchased at $1.25 per acre, with 40% paid upfront and 60% paid later. With a requirement of six months' prior residency, the order functionally restricted settlement to blacks, missionaries, and others who were already involved in the Experiment.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Claims to land under the new plan began to arrive immediately, but Commissioner Brisbane ignored them, hoping for another reversal of the decision in Washington. Chase did indeed reverse his position in February, restoring the plan for a tax sale. The sale took place in late February, with land selling for an average price of more than $11/acre (). The sale provoked outcry from freedpeople who had already claimed land according to Chase's December order.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's "March to the Sea" brought a massive regiment of the Union Army to the Georgia coast in December 1864. Accompanying the Army were an estimated ten thousand black refugees, former slaves. This group was already suffering from starvation and disease. Many former slaves had become disillusioned by the Union Army, having suffered pillaging, rape, and other abuses. They arrived in Savannah "after long marches and severe privations, "weary, famished, sick, and almost naked". On December 19, Sherman dispatched many of these slaves to Hilton Head, an island already serving as refugee camp. Saxton reported on December 22 "Every cabin and house on these islands is filled to overflowing—I have some 15,000." 700 more arrived on Christmas.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: On January 11, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton arrived in Savannah with Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs and other officials. This group met with Generals Sherman and Saxton to discuss the refugee crisis. They decided, in turn, to consult leaders from the local Black community and ask them: "What do you want for your own people?" A meeting was duly arranged.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: At 8:00 PM on January 12, 1865, Sherman met with a group of twenty people, many of whom had been slaves for most of their lives. The blacks of Savannah had seized the opportunity of emancipation to strengthen their community's institutions, and they had strong political feelings. They selected one spokesperson: Garrison Frazier, the 67-year-old former pastor of Third African Baptist. In the late 1850s, he had for $1,000 bought freedom for himself and his wife. Frazier had consulted with the refugees as well as the other representatives. He told Sherman: "The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor." Frazier suggested that young men would serve the government in fighting the Rebels, and that therefore "the women and children and old men" would have to work this land. Almost all of those present agreed to request land grants for autonomous black communities, on the grounds that racial hatred would prevent economic advancement for blacks in mixed areas.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15, issued on January 16, 1865, instructed officers to settle these refugees on the Sea Islands and inland: 400,000 total acres divided into 40-acre plots. Though mules (beasts of burden used for plowing) were not mentioned, some of its beneficiaries did receive them from the army. Such plots were colloquially known as "Blackacres".


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Sherman's orders specifically allocated "the islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns River, Florida." The order specifically prohibits whites from settling in this area. Saxton, who, with Stanton, helped to craft the document, was promoted to major general and charged with oversight of the new settlement. On February 3, Saxton addressed a large freedpeople's meeting at Second African Baptist, announcing the order and outlining preparations for new settlement. By June 1865, about 40,000 freedpeople were settled on in the Sea Islands.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: The Special Field Orders were issued by Sherman, not the federal government with regards to all former slaves, and he issued similar ones "throughout the campaign to assure the harmony of action in the area of operations." It was claimed by some that these settlements were never intended to last. However, this was never the understanding of the settlers—nor of General Saxton, who said he asked Sherman to cancel the order unless it was meant to be permanent.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: In practice, the areas of land settled were quite variable. James Chaplin Beecher observed that the "so called 40 acre tract[s] vary in size from eight acres to (450) four hundred and fifty." Some areas were settled by groups: Skidaway Island was colonized by a group of over 1000 people, including Reverend Ulysses L. Houston.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: The Sea Islands project reflected a policy of "40 acres and a mule" as the basis for post-slavery economics. Especially in 1865, the precedent it set was highly visible to newly free blacks seeking land of their own.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Freedpeople from across the region flocked to the area in search of land. The result was refugee camps afflicted by disease and short on supplies.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Especially after Sherman's Orders, the coastal settlements generated enthusiasm for a new society that would supplant the slave system. Reported one journalist in April 1865: "It was the Plymouth colony repeating itself. They agreed if any others came to join them, they should have equal privileges. So blooms the Mayflower on the South Atlantic Coast."


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Beginning in occupied Louisiana under General Nathaniel P. Banks, the military developed a wage-labor system for cultivating large areas of land. This system—which took effect with Lincoln and Stanton's blessing soon after the Emancipation Proclamation legitimized contracts with the freedpeople—offered ironclad one-year contracts to freedpeople. The contract promised $10/month as well as provisions and medical care. The system was soon also adopted by General Lorenzo Thomas in Mississippi.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Sometimes land came under the control of Treasury officials. Jurisdictional disputes erupted between the Treasury Department and the military. Criticism of Treasury Department profiteering by General John Eaton and journalists who witnessed the new form of plantation labor influenced public opinion in the North and pressured Congress to support direct control of land by freedmen. The Treasury Department, particularly as Secretary Chase prepared to seek the Republican nomination in 1864, accused the military of treating the freedpeople inhumanely. Lincoln decided in favor of military rather than Treasury jurisdiction, and the wage labor system became more deeply established. Abolitionist critics of the policy called it no better than serfdom.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: One of the largest black landownership projects took place at Davis Bend, Mississippi, the 11,000-acre site of plantations owned by Joseph Davis and his famous younger brother Jefferson, president of the Confederacy. Influenced by some aspects of Robert Owen's socialism, Joseph Davis had established the experimental 4000-acre Hurricane Plantation in 1827 at Davis Bend. Davis allowed several hundred slaves to eat nutritious food, live in well-built cottages, receive medical care, and resolve their disputes in a weekly "Hall of Justice" court. His motto was: "The less people are governed, the more submissive they will be to control." Davis relied heavily on the managerial skills of Ben Montgomery, a well-educated slave who conducted much of the plantation's business.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: The Battle of Shiloh began a period of turmoil (1862–1863), at Davis Bend, although its black residents continued farming. The plantation was occupied by two companies of black Union troops in December 1863. Under the command of Colonel Samuel Thomas, these soldiers began to fortify the area. General Ulysses S. Grant had expressed a desire to make of the Davis plantations "a negro paradise." Thomas began to lease the land to black tenants for the 1864 crop season. Black refugees who had gathered in Vicksburg moved "en masse" to Davis Bend under the auspices of the Freedman's Department (an agency created by the military prior to Congressional authorization of the "Freedmen's Bureau", discussed below).


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Davis Bend was caught in the middle of the turf war between the military and the Treasury Department. In February 1864, the Treasury re-confiscated 2000 acres of Davis Bend, restoring them to white owners who had sworn loyalty oaths. It also leased 1,200 acres to Northern investors. Although Thomas resisted instructions to prevent the free blacks from farming, General Eaton ordered him to comply. Eaton also ordered Thomas to confiscate farming equipment held by blacks, on the grounds that—because Mississippi law banned slaves from owning property—they must have stolen such possessions. The Treasury Department sought to charge the plantation workers a fee for using the cotton gin. The residents of Davis Bend objected strenuously to these measures. In a petition signed by 56 farmers (including Montgomery) and published in the New Orleans "Tribune":


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: At the commencement of our present year, this plantation was, in compliance with an order of our Post Commander, deprived of horses, mules, oxen and farming utensils of every description, very much of which had been captured and brought into Union lines by the undersigned; in consequence of which deprivations, we were, of course, reduced to the necessity of buying everything necessary for farming, and having thus far succeeded in performing by far the most expensive and laborious part of our work, we are prepared to accomplish the ginning, pressing, weighing, marking, consigning, etc., in a business-like order if allowed to do so.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: From 1863 to 1865, Congress debated what policies it might adopt to address the social issues that would confront the South after the war. The Freedmen's Aid Society pushed for a "Bureau of Emancipation" to assist in the economic transition away from slavery. It used Port Royal as evidence that blacks could live and work on their own. Land reform was often discussed, though some objected that too much capital would be required to ensure the success of black farmers. On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives approved the 13th Amendment, which outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude except in the case of punishment.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Congress continued to debate the economic and social status of the free population, with land reform identified as critical to realizing black freedom. A bill drafted in conference committee to provide limited land tenure for one year while authorizing military supervision of freedmen was rejected in the Senate by abolitionists who thought it did not do justice to the freedmen. A six-person committee quickly wrote "an entirely new bill" which substantially increased its promise to the freedmen.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: This stronger version of the bill passed both houses on March 3, 1865. With this bill, Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands under the War Department. The Bureau had authority to provide supplies for refugees—and an unfunded mandate to redistribute land, in parcels of up to 40 acres:


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: Sec. 4. "And be it further enacted," That the commissioner, under the direction of the President, shall have authority to set apart, for the use of loyal refugees and freedmen, such tracts of land within the insurrectionary states as shall have been abandoned, or to which the United States shall have acquired title by confiscation or sale, or otherwise, and to every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman, as aforesaid, there shall be assigned not more than forty acres of such land, and the person to whom it was so assigned shall be protected in the use and enjoyment of the land for the term of three years at an annual rent not exceeding six per centum upon the value of such land, as it was appraised by the state authorities in the year eighteen hundred and sixty, for the purpose of taxation, and in case no such appraisal can be found, then the rental shall be based upon the estimated value of the land in said year, to be ascertained in such manner as the commissioner may by regulation prescribe. At the end of said term, or at any time during said term, the occupants of any parcels so assigned may purchase the land and receive such title thereto as the United States can convey, upon paying therefor the value of the land, as ascertained and fixed for the purpose of determining the annual rent aforesaid.


title: Forty acres and a mule

text: The bill thus established a system in which Southern blacks could lease abandoned and confiscated land, with yearly rent at 6% (or less) of the land's value (assessed for tax purposes in 1860). After three years, they would have the option to buy this land at full price. The Bureau in charge, which became known as the Freedmen's Bureau, was placed under the continuing supervision of the military because Congress anticipated the need to defend black settlements from White Southerners. The bill mandated institutionalized black landownership of the same land that had formerly relied on their unpaid labor.