SUBDIVISION OF FARMS. 347 



or forty dollars for a farm one acre broad and thirty or 

 forty deep — four years being allowed to make the pay- 

 ment. The seigneurs in this district concede for a 

 yearly reserved rent of half-a-dollar for the lot, and 

 one-twelfth of the value at each change of ownersliip. 



But it is not all parents who are thus provident for 

 their children, or in all localities that land can be 

 obtained so near the paternal home that the children 

 shall not object to remove it. According to the French 

 law, the father's property is shared out among his 

 children when he dies ; and thus, in many cases, instead 

 of leaving the home-farm wholly to the eldest son, 

 the family of sons parcel it out among themselves. 

 Four sons will divide a farm of two arpeuts in front, 

 and thirty or forty backwards, into four long stripes of 

 half an arpent broad in front, and thirty or forty in 

 length. Thus the evils necessarily attendant upon the 

 original shape of the farms become manifold increased ; 

 the morcellement proceeds, unhappily, in some localities, 

 as it has already done in so many districts of France 

 and Belgium : and the poverty of the people advances 

 in proportion. It is the exact counterpart of the sub- 

 division into long stripes which has led to such evil 

 results among the sub-tenantry on many estates in 

 Ireland — a similar Celtic population. 



The effect which such a subdivision, followed by the 

 building of houses along the road-side upon each lot, 

 must have upon the apparent populousness of the coun- 

 try, in the eye of the traveller, cannot fail to strike 

 the reader. 



The system of clearing adopted in Lower Canada 

 seems to be nearly the same as I had already seen in 

 New Brunswick ; and the log-cabins upon the new 

 clearings are quite as poor, and as poorly provided, as 

 those of the Irish immigrants into that province. 



In this day's ride, however, I was struck with the 



