There are many aspects of Thomas Pringle's life in Scotland, South Africa and England that need explaining to readers unfamiliar with one or more of these environments as they were in Pringle's time. Happily, there is a wide range of information available on all of them and the Bibliography on pp. 250–6 identifies many sources of such information.

A note will be added here on the indigenous peoples of the Cape Colony, on the Bantu-speaking nations largely beyond it, and on the state of the eastern frontier of the colony where Pringle's party of Scots settlers, and the English settlers near them were located.

Within the colony, and in smaller numbers outside it, were the pastoral Khoikhoi, bondsmen of the colonists until 1828 and the hunter-gatherer Bushmen, now also known as San, the underclass of these ancient occupiers of the land, known jointly today as Khoisan. The Griquas and other mixed-race groups like the Bergenaars and the urban ‘Cape Coloured’ people were widely spread. The slave population, imported from Indonesia, India, Madagascar and other parts of Africa were mainly in the western Cape.

On the frontier and to the north-east were the Bantu-speaking nations and clans, known as the Nguni (as distinct from the Sotho-Tswana to the north and north-west): the amaXhosa (amaGqunukhwebe, amaRharhabe, amaNgqika among them), closest to the Albany settlers and the abaThembu (including the amaNdungwane and the amaTshatshu), neighbours of the Scots settlers.