there are very extensive settlements of the
race below Quebec till they are lost in the rugged mountains of
Gaspesia, yet the main body of _habitants_ rest upon the low and
tranquil shores of the St. Lawrence, for one hundred and eighty miles
between the Castle of St. Lewis and the Cathedral of Montreal. The
farm-houses, neat, and invariably whitewashed, line the river,
particularly on the left bank, like a cantonment, and go back to the
north for, at the utmost, ten or twelve miles into the then boundless
wilderness.

The cultivated ground is in narrow slips, fenced by the customary snake
fence, which is nothing more than slabs of trees split coarsely into
rails, and set up lengthways in a zig-zag form to give them stability,
with struts, or riders, at the angles, to bind them. These farms are
about nine hundred feet in width, and four or five miles in depth, being
the concessions or allotments made originally by the _seigneurs_ to the
_censitaires_, or tillers of the soil. Every here and there, a long road
is left, with cross ones, to obtain access to the farms, much in the
same way, but not near so conveniently, or well done, as the concession
lines in Upper Canada, which embrace large spaces of a hundred acre or
two hundred acre lots, including many of these lots, and giving a
sixty-six feet or a forty foot road, as the case may be, and thus
dividing the country into a series of large parallelograms, and making
every farm accessible.

Each Lower French Canadian farmer is an independent yeoman, excepting as
bound to the soil, and to certain seignorial dues and privileges, which
are, however, trifling, and far from burthensome. Taxes are unknown,
and they cheerfully support their priesthood.

It is not generally known in England that the feudal tenure--although
very laughable and absurd at this time of day, and from which some
seigneurs, but never those of unmixed French blood, are disposed to
claim titles equivalent to the baronage of England, with incomes of
about a thousand a year, or at most two, and manorial houses, resembling
very much a substantial Buckinghamshire grazier's chateau--was
originally established by the French monarchs for wise, highly useful,
and benevolent purposes.

These seigneuries were parcelled out in very large tracts of forest
along the banks of the St. Lawrence, or the rivers and bays of Lower
Canada, on the condition that they should be again parcelled out among
those who would eng