Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Maps
- Preface
- Author's Note
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Scotland: Border Farm to Literary Edinburgh (1789–1820)
- Part II The Cape Frontier: Pioneer, Settler Leader (1820–1821)
- 5 Settler Leader: Arrival
- 6 At Glen Lynden
- 7 Beyond Glen Lynden
- Part III Cape Town and Genadendal: The Stand Against Power (1822–1825)
- Part IV The Frontier, Karroo: Rural Retreat and the ‘Great Cause’ (1825–1826)
- Part V London Literary Life and The Anti-Slavery Campaign (1826–1833)
- Part VI Scotland and Highgate A Poet Returns to his Roots and Last Works (1830–1834)
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Beyond Glen Lynden
from Part II - The Cape Frontier: Pioneer, Settler Leader (1820–1821)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Maps
- Preface
- Author's Note
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Scotland: Border Farm to Literary Edinburgh (1789–1820)
- Part II The Cape Frontier: Pioneer, Settler Leader (1820–1821)
- 5 Settler Leader: Arrival
- 6 At Glen Lynden
- 7 Beyond Glen Lynden
- Part III Cape Town and Genadendal: The Stand Against Power (1822–1825)
- Part IV The Frontier, Karroo: Rural Retreat and the ‘Great Cause’ (1825–1826)
- Part V London Literary Life and The Anti-Slavery Campaign (1826–1833)
- Part VI Scotland and Highgate A Poet Returns to his Roots and Last Works (1830–1834)
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Pringle's travels during these 16 months at Glen Lynden achieved much for him – a wide knowledge of the country and its people, with a slow growth of his commitment to raising up the oppressed indigenous groups, and absorption of its varied beauty: forested mountains beside the bleak harshness and sterility of parched plains and their teeming animal life, which found its way into his poetry when ‘recollected in tranquillity’. No poet before him had translated his romantic, Arcadian view of nature to the wilds of southern Africa.
In his Narrative of a Residence in South Africa there is writing of descriptive power not to be found in Barrow, Burchell or Lichtenstein and of a beauty acknowledged even by Cory, who saw Pringle as an enemy of the colonists he so admired.
The first of his three major journeys was made for a hard practical purpose. In July and August 1820 it had become clear that cattle and sheep rather than crops must provide the party's livelihood. The market – the infant Port Elizabeth – was too far and the roads towards it execrable. There was sufficient water to irrigate only 50 or 60 acres. Every effort was made to grow barley and wheat, and orchards were planted but it was quickly realized that vastly more than the 1100 acres allotted to the whole party would be essential to their survival. One hundred acres per adult male in such a landscape was derisory and ‘even a thousand acres per family was an inadequate allotment’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Thomas PringleSouth African pioneer, poet and abolitionist, pp. 93 - 108Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012