The clearing of the roadsteads became almost a yearly festival and a certain necessity. So the blue shadow begins by the sea and ends by the sea; but to reach the other end will take us in a motor more than thirty minutes; an ox-waggon lumbering across sandy dunes and along stony mountain-paths took the early settlers something more than a day or two. We did it riding, and took something like a month; but one must compromise to really enjoy life. We rode one day along the main road to Rondebosch, where the old Commanders would ride out two hundred years ago, to inspect the Company's granary, 'Groote Schuur,' and the Company's guesthouse, 'Rustenburg.' The Cape Town length of the road has little of interest. 'Roodebloem' comes into the list of old homesteads; and down in the swampy green fields of Observatory Road, where the clerk life of Cape Town has its two acres and a cow, and near the Royal Observatory, lived the Company's free miller; and the Liesbeek waters worked his mill. There is still an old mill in existence, but probably of later date. [Illustration: TIGERBERG AND DIEP RIVER] In 1658 the Company gave grants of land along the Liesbeek River, mostly all along the west side, beginning with the swampy land below the Wind Mountain or Devil's Peak, granted to the Commander's nephew-in-law, Jan Reyniez, and ending on the south side, somewhere in Wynberg, with the lands of Jacob Cloeten of Cologne. The burghers, having formed into three companies--one called Vredens Company--lying in lands on the wrong side of the river at Rosebank, sent in a petition, which was forwarded with all due delay to the Commander and Council, who, 'having found, according to the many deeds and diagrams, that the land is quite dangerously situated, the owners being exposed to the depredations of the Hottentots,' granted new lands near the Company's orchard, called 'Rustenburg.' The conditions laid down by the Company to freemen varied slightly in each little colony: there were three along the Blue shadow: '1. They might fish in the rivers, but not for sale. '2. The Company would _sell_ them at ploughing time a plough and twelve oxen. The ground should be theirs for ever. '3. That they should grow tobacco.' These are some of the rules. Everyone knows the story of how the rules later became unbearable--the fixing of selling-prices by the Company, the paying of taxes, the limitations set on selling produce to the ships. The conditions, however, and the dangers from the Hottentots on the east side of the shadow, were thankfully accepted. In the old records there is the entry which explains the position of these little colonies: '_February 21, 1657._ 'Fine sunshine, fickle weather.'