Note 709 — Chapter XI · —The Anthropo-Geography Of Rivers

On this water thoroughfare every dwelling faced. Hence land on the river was at a premium, while that two miles back was to be had for the taking. The original grants measured generally 766 feet in width and 7,660 in depth inland; but when bequeathed from generation to generation, they were divided up along lines running back at right angles to the all important waterway. Hence each habitant farm measured its precious river-front by the foot and its depth by the mile, while the cabins were ranged side by side in cosy neighborliness. The côte type of village, though eminently convenient for the Indian trade, was ill adapted for government and defense against the savages; but the need for the communication supplied by the river was so fundamental, that it nullified all efforts of the authorities to concentrate the colonists in more compact settlements. Parkman says: "One could have seen almost every house in Canada by paddling a canoe up the St. Lawrence and Richelieu."709 The same type of land-holding can be traced to-day on the Chaudiere River, where the fences run back from the stream like the teeth of a comb. It is reproduced on a larger scale in the long, narrow counties ranged along the lower St. Lawrence, whose shape points to the old fluvial nuclei of settlement. Similarly the early Dutch grants on the Hudson gave to the patroons four miles along the river and an indefinite extension back from the stream. In the early Connecticut River settlements, the same consideration of a share in the river and its alluvial bottoms distributed the town lots among the inhabitants in long narrow strips running back from the banks.710