Wagon-tracks and Orchards. Early Days in Sandton

(Johannesburg: Ad. Donker, 1976) 0949937223. 4to; original green boards, with black lettering to spine; pictorial dustwrapper (housed in removable protector); pp. 136; liberally illustrated with contemporary photographs. Dustwrapper a little browned, rubbed and edgeworn; earlier owner's bookplate to front free endpaper; school portrait photograph, with handwritten caption, mounted to flyleaf verso; trace of ripple to lower board. Good condition. "Sandton, the new municipality north of Johannesburg, is recognized as one of the most prosperous and most rapidly growing communities in South Africa. Little is known of Sandton's history and few people are aware that voortrekker settlers lived in the area in the first half of the nineteenth century. While Johannesburg was growing into a big mining town, a few isolated farmers, about ten kilometres to the north, formed the beginnings of a community. The author, Juliet Marais Louw, who lived in the area, describes the quaint and often amusing conditions which, until quite recently, prevailed in this now highly sophisticated neighbourhood. She writes from personal knowledge of the days when the link with civilization was the milk van, when shopping was in the nature of a social call, when the telephone exchange was happy to take messages for the lady next door. Over a hundred delightful old photographs, many taken during the 1890s by one of the original settlers, Max Weber, give the book a rare charm." .