Reprinted in 1970 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the arrival of the 1890 Pioneer Column, and the establishment of Salisbury, Rhodesia's capital (now Harare, Zimbabwe), and also as a tribute to the part played by William Harvey Brown and his fellow Americans in the founding and early development of Rhodesia. A naturalist attached to the Smithsonian Institution, the author served as one of the Pioneer Corps, trailblazers to Cecil Rhodes's earliest settlers. Brown remained in Rhodesia because, as he says, "for the first time in my life I felt that I was helping to make history, that I had witnessed the laying of the cornerstone of what, by virtue of the natural resources and fertility of the country, would one day become a populous and valuable colony." He became farmer, mine-owner and timber-man, and eventually, in 1909-1910, Mayor of Salisbury. In this book, the author describes in detail the march of the Column and the adventurous first eight years of white settlement, and throws some fascinating sidelights on the quality of pioneer life in early Rhodesia. On The South African Frontier is one of the most outstanding books to have been written during the period. It is particularly valuable for Brown's observations on race problems arising from the forced mixing of two wholly different cultures.

 

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