GreenGaul

Roaring river

I get the feeling that had the finished product been polished by Howard that the sentence structure, diction and imagery would have been more complex.  Compare these two examples:

Almuric
As we whirled over the river I saw that it was rushing with terrific velocity. Its roar came up to us, and I saw the seething of eddying whirlpools in its racing current.

Hour of the Dragon
The great river, swerving from those turreted cliffs, swept thunderously through the marching hills with many a rapid and foaming cataract.

Weapons

Nineteen inches was a popular length with Howard for murderous, double-edged blades:

Almuric
I examined the dagger with much interest. A more murderous weapon I have never seen. The blade was perhaps nineteen inches in length, double-edged, and
sharp as a razor.

Rogues in the House
As he went he fingered the poniard he had captured - a murderous weapon with a broad double-edged blade nineteen inches long.

Taste:

The use of the word 'tang' to describe how something tasted seemed popular with Howard:

Almuric
It had an unusual tang, a quality I have always found present in Almuric water, but it was deliciously cold and satisfying.

Slithering Shadows
It contained a crimson wine-like liquor of a peculiar tang, unfamiliar to him, but it was like nectar to his parched gullet.

Red Nails
The food was fruit of an exotic kind unfamiliar to the wanderers, but very palatable, and the drink was a light crimson wine that carried a heady tang.

Hey Green Gaul!    You do realize that whatever "Howardian Almuric" we have (more than likely) was basically a first draft? It's unlikely REH would have thrown on the polish seen in most of your examples. That still doesn't mean most of the prose wasn't Howard.

 

BTW, thanks for all the quotes. I never noticed the several mentions of "lions" until now.

Yes, at first I suspected such passages were not written by Howard.  Later I figured, as you said, that it was probably because of the fact it was still in 'draft' form.

on lions: there is one other mention of lions on Almuric, when he and Altha skirted near the woods just before the storm.  References to earth-like animals (bears, wolves, vultures also appear) made me also wonder whether the setting for this story hadn't changed.  I know that at least one of Howard's stories was reworked and given a different setting and protagonist.   Reading Almuric, I sometimes wondered if it was originally a 'Lost World' tale that had been transplanted to an alien planet.  One example that struck me was a passage where the protagonist comments on the rising of the moon. So much sword and planet stories would mention multiple moons in order to heighten the sense of the unearthly 'were no longer in Kansas'.  There's not even a comment on the fact that Almuric has only a single moon.

Ruins:
Some use of metaphor in the Almuric sample, though broken up by character actions and observations.  Note how the Conan samples include more extended description, though both Almuric and the Black Colossus include the aspect of unnatural silence:

Almuric
A brooding silence lay over the broken walls and columns as I entered the ruins. Between the gleaming white tusks and surfaces deep black shadow floated, almost liquid in its quality. From one dusky pool to the other I glided silently, sword in hand...
Utter silence reigned, as I had never encountered it anywhere on Almuric before. Not a distant lion roared, not a night fowl voiced its weird cry. I might have been the last survivor on a dead world.
In silence I came to a great open space, flanked by a circle of broken pillars, which must have been a plaza. Here I halted, motionless, my skin crawling.

The Black Colossus
On every hand rose the grim relics of another, forgotten age: huge broken pillars, thrusting up their jagged pinnacles into the sky; long wavering lines of crumbling walls; fallen cyclopean blocks of stone; shattered images, whose horrific features the corroding winds and dust storms had half erased. From horizon to horizon no sign of life: only the sheer breathtaking sweep of the naked desert, bisected by the wandering line of a long-dry river course; in the midst of that vastness the glimmering fangs of the ruins, the columns standing up like broken masts of sunken ships.

Queen of the Black Coast
Weeds and rank river grass grew between the stones of broken piers and shattered paves that had once been streets anal spacious plazas and broad courts. From all sides except that toward the river, the jungle crept in, masking fallen columns and crumbling mounds with poisonous green. Here and there buckling towers reeled drunkenly against the morning sky, and broken pillars jutted up among the decaying walls. In the center space a marble pyramid was spired by a slim column.