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of the dull checkerboard monotony there is an almost endless variety of magnificent vistas.] [Sidenote: and of Western counties.] If now we look at Livingston County, in which, this township of Deerfield is situated, we observe that the county is made up of sixteen townships, in four rows of four; and the next county, Washtenaw, is made up of twenty townships, in five rows of four. Maps of our Western states are thus apt to have somewhat of a checkerboard aspect, not unlike the wonderful country which Alice visited after she had gone through the looking-glass. Square townships are apt to make square or rectangular counties, and the state, too, is likely to acquire a more symmetrical shape. Nothing could be more unlike the jagged, irregular shape of counties in Virginia or townships in Massachusetts, which grew up just as it happened. The contrast is similar to that between Chicago, with its straight streets crossing at right angles, and Boston, or London, with their labyrinths of crooked lanes. For picturesqueness the advantage is entirely with the irregular city, but for practical convenience it is quite the other way. So with our western lands the simplicity and regularity of the system have made it a marvel of convenience for the settlers, and doubtless have had much to do with the rapidity with which civil governments have been built up in the West. "This fact," says a recent writer, "will be appreciated by those who know from experience the ease and certainty with which the pioneer on the great plains of Kansas, Nebraska, or Dakota is enabled to select his homestead or 'locate his claim' unaided by the expensive skill of the surveyor." [8] [Footnote 8: Howard, _Local Const. Hist. of U. S._, vol. i. p. 139.] [Sidenote: Some effects of the system.] There was more in it than this, however. There was a germ of organization planted in these western townships, which must be noted as of great importance. Each township, being six miles in length and six miles in breadth, was divided into thirty-six numbered sections, each containing just one square mile, or 640 acres. Each section, moreover, was divided into 16 tracts of 40 acres each, and sales to settlers were and are generally made by tracts at the rate of a dollar and a quarter per acre. For fifty dollars a man may buy forty acres of unsettled land, provided he will actually go and settle upon it, and this has proved to be a very effective inducement for en
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