336 CHURCHES AND PRESBYTERES. 



in these counties, not only miicli fine land, and a thickly 

 settled country, but what appeared to me, as a mere 

 passer-by, to be many indications of prosperity and com- 

 parative comfort. About every two leagues, often nearer, 

 rose a large church, and beside it a comfortable 

 parsonage or preshytere^ and houses enough to form a 

 considerable village or church-town. Many small rivers 

 flow into the St Lawrence in the county of Tlslet, 

 which are navigable for short distances ; and the new 

 houses building in many places indicated that, notwith- 

 standing the failure of crops, and the alleged scarcity of 

 employment, all gleams of prosperity had not yet left 

 this part of the lower province. 



The stranger will here also see illustrated, what I had 

 already become familiar with in Nova Scotia and New 

 Brunswick, the peculiar love of society and neighbour- 

 hood by which the French population are distinguished. 

 Continuous rows of houses, separated by one or two 

 intervening fields, accompany him for miles along his 

 road. In fact, wherever the country is fully settled, 

 this is the case, unless the traveller happens to turn up a 

 cross-road, when a couple of miles may occasionally be 

 passed without meeting with a farmer's house. This 

 close neighbourhood is obtained by the method already 

 described, of dividing the land into long stripes, or 

 narrow adjoining farms. It is much to be wished that 

 those who really have the agricultural improvement of 

 the French Canadian holdings at heart, should 

 endeavour to have this system discontinued. The 

 amount of labour, both for men and horses, is greatly 

 Increased by placing the centre of operations and the 

 home of the labourers and stock at the extremity of these 

 stripes of land ; and the difficulty is greater in properly 

 superintending and executing all the necessary operations 

 of the farm. Separated more widely from each other, 

 they might possibly gossip less and labour more. 



