This rather peculiar configuration of the farms arose wholly from the way in which the colony was first settled. For over a century after the French came to the St Lawrence all the seigneuries were situated directly on the shores of the river. This was only natural, for the great waterway formed the colony's carotid artery, supplying the life-blood of all New France so far as communications were concerned. From seigneury to seigneury men traversed it in canoes or bateaux in summer, and over its frozen surface they drove by carriole during the long winters. Every one wanted to be in contact with this main highway, so that the demand for farms which should have some river frontage, however small, was brisk from the outset. Near the river the habitant began his clearing and built his house. Farther inland, as the lands rose from the shore, was the pasture; and behind this again lay the still uncleared woodland. When the colony built its first road, this thoroughfare skirted the north shore of the St Lawrence, and so placed an even greater premium on farms contiguous to the river. It was only after all the best lands with river frontage had been taken up that settlers resorted to what was called 'the second range' farther inland. Now it happened that in thus adapting the shape of grants to the immediate convenience and caprice of the habitants a curious handicap was in the long run placed upon agricultural progress. By the terms of the Custom of Paris, which was the common law of the colony, all the children of a habitant's family, male and female, inherited equal shares of his lands. When, therefore, a farm was to be divided at its owner's decease each participant in the division wanted a share in the river frontage. With large families the rule, it can easily be seen that this demand could only be met by shredding the farm into mere ribbons of land with a frontage of only fifty or a hundred feet and a depth of a mile or more. That was the usual course pursued; each child had his strip, and either undertook to get a living out of it or sold his land to an adjoining heir. In any case, the houses and barns of the one who came into ownership of these thin oblongs were always situated at or near the water-front, so that the work of farming the land necessitated a great deal of travelling back and forth. Too many of the habitants, accordingly, got into the habit of spending all their time on the fields nearest the house and letting the rear grow wild. The situation militated against proper rotation of crops, and in many ways proved an obstacle to progress. The trouble was not that the farms were too small to afford the family a living. In point of area they were large enough; but their abnormal shape rendered it difficult for the habitant to get from them their full productive power with the rather short season of cultivation that the climate allowed.