Thomas and Margaret returned to Eildon from their Karroo journeys in mid-September and 26 letters written by Thomas in the two months that followed have survived, 17 of them to Fairbairn, three to the Commissioners of Inquiry, two each to Sir Richard Plasket and the Commercial Advertiser, and single letters to Brougham and Thomas Campbell. The stream of letters then dries up and we do not hear from him again until a letter is sent to the Commissioners from Grahams-town on 12 January 1826 indicatng that he had left Baviaans River at the end of December. His silence for the four weeks before his departure is unexplained but we shall find other evidence of his life at Eildon and his leaving the settlement in that time.

Pringle found a depressing scene at Baviaans River which was suffering the worst drought since 1821 and worse even than that, when no rain had fallen for eleven months. There would ‘not be an ear of corn reaped on the river this season’ unless rain fell speedily. At Eildon, William's ‘twenty acres of corn’ were ‘mostly dead already and his garden like a barn floor’, though unlike the aridity at Graaff-Reinet, there was ‘plenty of old grass and the sheep and cattle are in good condition’.

There had been serious clashes with the Bushmen. ‘Why has the Government not established missions among the Bushmen?’ he pondered accusingly, ‘or taken some other measures to reclaim them from savage and predatory habits?’ He showed a new understanding of their plight, the choice between ‘predatory warfare … or of servitude to the Boors’.