Frontispiece.

THE Rev. Edwin W. Smith author of “The Life and Times of Daniel Lindley”.

"The story of one of the first American missionaries in South Africa is here placed in the context of the most romantic period of that country's history. With two companions and their wives Lindley penetrated by ox-wagon a thousand miles into the interior (then almost unknown) to preach the Gospel to the Matabele and their redoubtable Chief, Mzilikazi - an enterprise in which they were associated with Robert Moffat in pre-Livingstone years. After the disasters which destroyed the mission, they trekked to Natal. His arrival in South Africa in 1835 synchronized with the Great Trek of the Boers.

Lindley became the first minister of the Voortrekkers - the only one they had in those days - and his parish embraced Natal, Orange Free State, and Transvaal (as they then were). His biography, never before written, is eagerly awaited by Afrikaans-speaking South Africans for they still hold him in great honour. "This is a name", said one of their papers, "that klinkt lieflik ('rings lovely') in the ears of Afrikaners". A town in the Orange Free State -- - bears his name. South Africa named one of its big aeroplanes 'Daniel Lindley'. After seven years of this itinerant pastorate he returned to his work among the Zulus. It is a great missionary tale, full of stirring adventure and portraying a life of splendid devotion, in which his wife shared. It is also of historical importance for Lindley played a prominent part in the life of Natal, first under the Boers and then under the British. For one thing he was associated with Theophilus Shepstone in the earliest demarcation of the land. The book is based upon a study of South African Archives and chiefly upon unpublished letters and diaries of the Lindley family"