FIRST SETTLEMENTS IN NATAL. 307 
dary of the Old Colony, and from them the race 
denominated "the Griquas," formed themselves. 
With these, the colonists opened a regular in- 
tercourse, as they soon found that in seasons of 
excessive drought within the colony, (where 
their herds and flocks were dying for want of 
pasturage,) the lands to the Northward of the 
Orange river, were generally favoured with 
more frequent and regular thunder-storms, thus 
ensuring a better supply of grass, during the 
summer months, than the colony itself afforded. 
From that time all the grazing farmers in that 
neighbourhood began to form establishments in 
the country between the Orange and the Yaal 
rivers, (the Kye and the Knu Gariep) and took 
possession of such tracts as they found unoccu- 
pied, or otherwise entering into regular leases 
with the prior occupants of those lands. They 
still, however, continued to consider their do- 
micile to be within the colony, to which they 
returned whenever the seasons of drought had 
passed away, or whenever called upon to pay 
their " opgaaf" or annual assessed taxes, not 
even then considering themselves absolved from 
the duties and ties which bound them to the 
old colony. 
This erratic life conduced, however, to dead- 
en their attachment to any particular locality, 
and gradually weaned them from all desire to> 
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