The Bush Boys: History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family

The narrative follows a former Dutch officer who becomes a trek-boer after losing property during an anti-English rebellion, settling beyond the Orange River with his small family and diminished stock. Stripped of servants and wealth, he and his sons and daughter endure frontier hardships: raids by predators, disease among horses, and the challenges of sparse settlement near the Kalahari. Told through the son's recollections, the account mixes family episodes, practical descriptions of colonial rural life, and detailed natural-history sketches of African wildlife and their habits, blending adventure with observation of human and animal survival on the remote Cape frontier.