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.

So important a handicap did this situation place upon the progress of agriculture that in 1744 the governor and the intendant drew the attention of the home authorities to it, and urged that some remedy be provided.  With simple faith in the healing power of a royal edict, the king promptly responded with a decree which ordered that no habitant should thenceforth build his house and barn on any plot of land which did not have at least one and one-half lineal arpents of frontage (about three hundred feet).  Any buildings so erected were to be demolished.  What a crude method of dealing with a problem which had its roots deep down in the very law and geography of the colony!  But this royal remedy for the ills of New France went the way of many others.  The authorities saw that it would work no cure, and only one attempt was ever made to punish those habitants who showed defiance.