The Voortrekkers – Johannes Meintjes

R250.00

Condition: DJ worn, book good. DJ not clipped. Reparations visible on the inside of the DJ for severe edge wear around the spine. Some moisture staining around the spine and top edge of DJ. Staining also visible on top text block but does not extend to the pages. Hardcover still in good shape with minimal shelf wear, but some kind of paper residue on front board (see images that accompany text). Contents clean, binding good. Overall a solid copy.
Format: Hardcover with DJ
Published: 1973 First Edition (Cassell)
Pages: 287
ISBN: 0304290343

Out of stock

Description

“The Great Trek” wrote Sir Winston Churchill, “was one of the remarkable feats of the nineteenth century.”

Five thousand Boers, men, women and children, set out in small parties into the unknown interior of southern Africa in search of new land and independence from British rule. With their wagons and oxen, their cattle, horses, Bibles and guns, these “Voortrekkers” created a legend and dramatically influenced the course of African history. The trickle of emigrant Boers soon became a flood which threatened the dominion of the military empires of such Zulu kings as Shaka and his successor Dingane. The Zulu warriors were magnificently drilled and contemptuous of death, but tactics based on massed charges and the stabbing assegais had little effect against the guns of the Voortrekkers.

At the decisive Battle of Blood River in December 1838 at least three thousand Zulus were killed, while the Boers lost not a man. Yet always the Voortrekkers moved in peril and as well as the fierce opposition of the Zulus and Matabele they had to contend with the British Government and such representatives as the brave, energetic and eccentric Sir Harry Smith, who had served under the great Wellington and regarded Boers and natives alike as “his children”.

But always the Trek spirit survived. For over thirty years the emigrants wandered across the veld, sustained against death, disease, privations and hardship by faith in the rightness of their actions and an unyielding trust in their God.