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 engage to cultivate them in the strips above-mentioned. Thus re-granted, the _seigneur_ could not eject the _habitant_, but was allowed to receive a nominal or feudal rent from the vassal, and the usual droits. These droits are, first, the barbarous "_lods et ventes_," or one thirteenth of the money upon every transfer which the _habitant_ makes by sale only; but the original rent can never be raised, whatever value the land may have attained. The rights of the mill, that old European appanage of the lord of the soil, were also reserved to the seigneur, who alone can build mills within his domain, or use the waters within his boundaries for mechanical purposes; but he must erect them at convenient distances, and must make and repair roads. The miller, therefore, takes toll of the grist, which is another source of seignorial revenue, although not a very great one, for the toll is, excepting the miller's thumb rights, not very large.