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It was the determination of the Voortrekkers to find a way to the coast from the Highveld that eventually conquered the Lowveld and lead to the opening up of this region to European settlement.
The Van Rensburg party, led by Jan van Rensburg, left the Zoutpansberg and were never heard of again. It is believed that they were killed in a skirmish with warriors from the Shangaan tribe on the banks of the Limpopo river.
Louis Trichardt, having had no news from of the Van Rensburg trek, decided to take his party through the mountains along the course of the Olifants River. This amounted to mountain climbing with ox-wagons. There was no road or track they could follow. They sent pathfinders ahead and shaped a zig-zag course up and down the mountain slopes. The terrain forced the repeated dismantling of their wagons which were then hauled up precipices and reassembled. The trek would however end in disaster. After having completed the hard work of crossing the mountains, the trek crawled into the Lowveld near the spot where Trichardtsdal stands today (60 kilometres from Tzaneen), and faced only a journey over a flat plain and a moderate climb over the Lebombo hills to reach Delgoa Bay (Maputo). The final 250 km would however turn out to be the most dangerous part of the entire journey from the Cape Colony. The tsetse-fly and the anopheles mosquito would wipe out nearly the entire party. By the time that the trek had reached the plain below the Drakensberg it was mid summer and the rains had begun. They had nothing to warn them about or protect them from the swarms of mosquitoes that attacked them, day and night.
Trichardt and his party had come looking for a harbour that would serve the new republic that was to be established in the Transvaal. Instead they found a primitive hospital full of men down with malaria or dysentery, and a town where everybody had “the shakes” and was drinking wine or brandy in the hope that this would help them to recover. Almost every member of the party developed the symptoms of malaria. Trichardt and his wife both died and were buried in the Lourenco Marques (now Maputo) cemetery. Many members of the party would follow its leader to shallow graves in foreign soil.
Hunters and transport riders were virtually the only visitors to the Lowveld in the early days and their warning to travelers was always the same: “Get out before the rains come”. The disappearance of the Van Rensburg trekkers and the sad fate of the Trichards, helped build up the notorious reputation the Lowveld had acquired and which was to last for many years.
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