The Lost Cities of Tarzan range far and wide across the world. The original novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs are filled with lost lands and cities, often in pairs with Hatfields & McCoys going at it for centuries. This post is going to look at the lost cities from the perspective of the comics that adapted these novels. Not every novel received an adaptation but most were done. I should acknowledge Gaylord DuBois and Joe Kubert as the writers who did those adaptations.
Opar
The first and most important is Opar, an ancient offshoot of lost Atlantis, ruled by the beautiful La. She holds sway over a race of men who have become shaggy and ape-like. Burroughs used the locale four times in The Return of Tarzan, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, Tarzan and the Golden Lion and Tarzan the Invincible. Opar was intriguing enough that later writers like Philip Jose Farmer wrote novels about its pre-history.
Once in the valley their progress was rapid, so that it was still light when they halted before the towering walls of the mancient city. The outer wall was fifty feet in height where it had not fallen into ruin, but nowhere as far as they could see had more than ten or twenty feet of the upper courses fallen away. It was still a formidable defense. On several occasions Tarzan had thought that he discerned things moving behind the ruined portions of the wall near to them, as though creatures were watching them from behind the bulwarks of the ancient pile.
Within the city, certain locations play an important role. The first is La’s throneroom, the inescapable Chamber of the Dead (which Tarzan escapes, of course), the sacrificial altar in the temple and most important, the great treasure room:
Carefully feeling about, he found himself within a large chamber, along the walls of which, and down the length of the floor, were piled many tiers of metal ingots of an odd though uniform shape. To his groping hands they felt not unlike double-headed bootjacks. The ingots were quite heavy, and but for the enormous number of them he would have been positive that they were gold; but the thought of the fabulous wealth these thousands of pounds of metal would have represented were they in reality gold, almost convinced him that they must be of some baser metal.
Xuja – Tarzan the Untamed
This lost city is filled with tamed lions. Tarzan ends up there looking for Jane after the events of World War I.
The city wall appeared to be about thirty feet in height, its plastered expanse unbroken except by occasional embrasures. Beyond the wall rose the domes of several structures and numerous minarets dotted the sky line of the city. The largest and central dome appeared to be gilded, while others were red, or blue, or yellow. The architecture of the wall itself was of uncompromising simplicity. It was of a cream shade and appeared to be plastered and painted. At its base was a line of well-tended shrubs and at some distance towards its eastern extremity it was vine covered to the top.
A-lur – Tarzan the Terrible
Still looking, he finds another lost city, A-Lur in Pal-U-Don where men have tails. There are two opposed groups, of course. That will happen over and over here. Seems you can’t have a lost city without a rival copying you.
“No,” replied Om-at; “but it has shortened our journey by at least a full day. So much the sooner shall Tarzan look upon the Valley of Jad-ben-Otho. Come!” and he led the way upward along the shoulder of Pastar-ul-ved until there lay spread below them a scene of mystery and of beauty—a green valley girt by towering cliffs of marble whiteness—a green valley dotted by deep blue lakes and crossed by the blue trail of a winding river. In the center a city of the whiteness of the marble cliffs —a city which even at so great a distance evidenced a strange, yet artistic architecture. Outside the city there were visible about the valley isolated groups of buildings—sometimes one, again two and three and four in a cluster—but always of the same glaring whiteness, and always in some fantastic form.
An important location in the city is the Temple of the Gryf where Tarzan faces off against the titular monster. As ERB wrote it, Russ Manning gives us a triceratops. I have no idea what DC was doing…
Trohanadalmakus/Veltopismakus -Tarzan and the Ant Men
Tarzan and the Ant Men doesn’t begin with the Ant men but a race of cave-dwellers who actually have a lost city inside their caves. They are known as the Alalus.
For a moment she sat contemplating him and then she arose and tossing him once more to her shoulder she walked toward the center of the amphitheater, the greater portion of which was covered by low buildings constructed of enormous slabs of stone, some set on edge to form the walls while others, lying across these, constituted the roofs. Joined end to end, with occasional wings at irregular intervals running out into the amphitheater, they enclosed a rough oval of open ground that formed a large courtyard.
The hive city of the Ant-men or Minuni is divided into two kingdoms: Trohanadalmakus and Veltopismakus.
The palace of Adendrohahkis, constructed in this way, was two hundred twenty feet in diameter, and one hundred ten feet high, with thirty-six floors capable of housing eighty thousand people, a veritable ant-hill of humanity. The city consisted of ten similar domes, though each slightly smaller than the king’s, housing a total of five hundred thousand people, two thirds of whom were slaves; these being for the most part the artisans and body servants of the ruling class. Another half million slaves, the unskilled laborers of the city, dwelt in the subterranean chambers of the quarries from which the building material was obtained. The passageways and chambers of these mines were carefully shored and timbered as the work progressed, resulting in fairly commodious and comfortable quarters for the slaves upon the upper levels at least, and as the city was built upon the surface of an ancient ground moraine, on account of the accessibility of building material, the drainage was perfect, the slaves suffering no inconvenience because of their underground quarters.
City of the Sepulchre/Nimmr – Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle
The ancient Crusaders this time, lost for centuries and unaware that times have changed. They are centuries ahead of the Romans who will show up later.
Just as the second day of the Great Tourney had opened in the Valley of the Sepulcher upon the plains below the city of Nimmr, a band of swart men in soiled thobs and carrying long matchlocks topped the summit of the pass upon the north side of the valley and looked down
upon the City of the Sepulcher and the castle of King Bohun.
The Gorilla City – Tarzan and the Lion Man
The Gorilla City sits in the Valley of Diamonds. It is ruled over by a mysterious human-ape hybrid who calls himself God.
Castrum Mare/Castrum Saguinarius – Tarzan and the Lost Empire
Here are the Romans with a similar time crunch as those Crusaders. They are unaware that Rome fell long ago…
Shortly afterward Tarzan saw before him, stretching across the road to the right and left as far as he could see through the forest, a lofty rampart surmounted by palisades and battlements. Directly ahead the roadway swung to the left just inside the outer line of the rampart and passed through a gateway that was flanked by lofty towers. At the base of the rampart was a wide moat through which a stream of water moved slowly, the moat being spanned by a bridge where the road crossed it.
Cathne/Athne – Tarzan and the City of Gold
Perhaps the most classic of the two cities at war novels. Tarzan gets in the middle and things are going to change.
“Xarator is a great peak, the centre of which is filled with fire and molten rock. It lies at the north end of the valley of Onthar and belongs to the men of Cathne, the city of gold. Athne, the city of ivory, is the city from which I come. The men of Cathne, in the valley of Onthar, are the enemies of my people.”
City of the Kavuru – Tarzan’s Quest
The City of Kavuru is the base from which these jungle raiders operate.
In the middle of the forenoon they came suddenly to the end of the forest and looked out across a narrow plain to a lofty mountain at the foot of which Jane thought that she discerned what appeared to be a palisade built close to a perpendicular cliff…As they approached more closely, Jane saw that the palisade was a massive affair of stone and that it formed three sides of a rectangle the rear wall of which was evidently the face of the mighty cliff that loomed high above them.
Ashair/Thobos – Tarzan and the Forbidden City
After crossing dangerous jungle, climbing a volcano, then crossing treacherous cliffs and then more jungle you get to the river and a barge.. From there you can see:
Ahead and to the left, Thome saw the domes of a small, walled city. To right and left, beyond the lake, were forest and plain; and in the far distance, at the upper end of the lake, another city was dimly visible.
Across from Ashair is Thobos. Tarzan breaks in using an underwater doorway right out of Jules Verne.
Chichen Itza – “Tarzan and the Castaways”
Getting near the end, Burroughs pulls one more city out of his bag of tricks. This time it is in Central America, not Africa.
…Tarzan could see that the central part of the city was built upon a knoll on the summit of which rose a pyramid surmounted by what appeared to be a temple. The pyramid was built of blocks of lava which formed steep steps leading to the summit. Around the pyramid were other buildings which hid its base from Tarzan’s view; and around all this central portion of the city was a wall, pierced occasionally by gates. Outside the wall were flimsy dwellings of thatch, doubtless the quarters of the poorer inhabitants of the city.
Conclusion
The lost city thing certainly was around before Edgar Rice Burroughs. H. Rider Haggard built his career on such locations. They are pretty standard fare in the Adventure fiction business. For a library full of such books, go here. So ERB wasn’t inventing anything new, but his cities have their own charm. Plenty of arenas to fight in, secret passages and other Gothic touches. Somehow Tarzan always falls in with the good guys in the dispute between the warring clans.
Next time… the lost cities of Conan!
