Tarzan Meets Jane

Date:  February 2, 1893

Event:  Tarzan returns to the Greystoke cabin and sees a ship in the harbor and white men on the beach.

Source:  "Then Tarzan returned, hunting, always hunting to the cabin by the beach." ERB-Tarzan Of The Apes. These events occur one day before the writing of Jane's letter which is February 3 (?).

Ronald William Kirby

Date:  Afternoon of February 2, 1893
Event:  Professor Q. Porter and his assistant Samuel T. Philander are lost.

Source:  It is during their lost wanderings that ERB provides two hints that the Porter party is in Portuguese Angola. "It was by the merest caprice of fortune that they headed toward the west coast of Africa, instead of toward Zanzibar on the opposite side of the dark continent." ERB-Tarzan Of The Apes. On the map of Africa, Zanzibar lies opposite the boundary areas of Portuguese Angola.

     "Instead, with all the assurance that deductive reasoning from a wrong premise induces in one, Mr. Samuel T. Philander grasped Professor Archimedes Q. Porter firmly by the arm and hurried the weakly protesting old gentleman off in the direction of Cape Town, fifteen hundred miles to the south." ERB-Tarzan Of The Apes. By air, the shortest distance between two points, 1500 miles from Cape Town would bring us north to the coastal town of Benguela, which is smack in the middle of the coastline of Portuguese Angola at about 12 degrees South Latitude. If you think of 1500 miles walking along the beach, then it would have to be measured from or to a point even farther south (closer to Cape Town) than Benguela. These events occur one day before the writing of Jane's letter which is February 3 (?).

Zdenek Burian

Date: Just turned night February 2, 1893
Event:  Tarzan rescues Jane and Esmeralda from Sabor, the lioness.

Source:  It is at this point that ERB strongly suggests the year date. "Little did John Clayton imagine when he fashioned that crude but mighty portal that one day, twenty years later, it would shield a fair American girl, then unborn, from the teeth and talons of a man-eater," ERB-Tarzan Of The Apes.

     From this statement, we learn that Tarzan is twenty at this occurrence, and Jane is less than twenty.  The following morning when the Porter party buries  the bones of John and Alice Clayton the statement is made, "When the grave had been filled with earth the little party turned back toward the cabin, and Esmeralda, still weeping copiously for the two she had never heard of before today, and who had been dead twenty years, chanced to glance toward the harbor." ERB-Tarzan Of The Apes.

     That night Jane writes a letter to Hazel Strong and the statement is made, "Within the little building a light was burning, for Clayton had found an unopened tin of oil which had stood intact for twenty years, a part of the supplies left with the Clayton's by Black Michael." ERB-Tarzan Of The Apes. These events occur one day before the writing of Jane's letter which is February 3 (?).

Chat: Also from Jane's letter to Hazel Strong we learn the Baltimore native is left-handed. "And now to be baffled by strange, uncouth characters the like of which he had never seen before! Why, they even tipped in the opposite direction from all that he had ever examined either in printed books or the difficult script of the few letters he had found." ERB-Tarzan Of The Apes. 

Zdenek Burian

Date:  February 3 (?), 1893

Event:  Tarzan digs up and reburied Professor Porter's treasure and Jane writes Hazel Strong a letter.

Source:  ERB's penned account implies these events occurred the day following Jane and Esmeralda's rescue. February 3 (?) is the date Jane believes it to be when writing Hazel Strong a letter.  It is my belief that the date 1909 is a deliberate attempt by ERB, the author, to modernize the story to protect the Greystoke's true identity.

Joe Kubert

Date:  February 4, 1893
Event: Tarzan reads Jane's letter.

Source:  ERB's penned account plainly implies these events occurred the day following Jane's letter writing. Note another hint that ERB provides that John and Alice are marooned in Portuguese Angola. In Jane's letter, she writes, "West Coast of Africa, about 10 Degrees South of Latitude. (So Mr. Clayton says.) ERB-Tarzan Of The Apes.

Russ Manning

Date:  Morning of February 5, 1893
Event:  Jane finds her missing letter with Tarzan's note.

Source:  "The next morning Jane found her missing letter in the exact spot from which it had disappeared two nights before." ERB-Tarzan Of The Apes.

Russ Manning

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Michael Moody is a lifelong fan and collector of Edger Rice Burroughs. Moody has contributed over two hundred articles to various ERB-related fanzines over forty-five years. He also manages an unauthorized Tarzan blog titled, Greystoke Chronologist: James Michael Moody. There the researcher chronologies the Tarzan books starting in May 1872 (known as the pushback theory) instead of the more accepted date, May 1888.

James Michael Moody is also the author of the action-packed Sci-Fi fantasy adventure Unium series. Pioneers On Unium, published December 31, 2019, Exiled On Unium, published August 25, 2022, and Swordsman On Unium published on July 15, 2024.