Above, looking due south, we have a bed-room,
dressing-room, and large cupboard for our clothes. There are two
other rooms at the back for the men.
The other house is for the labourers, of whom there are eleven, with
a woman as cook, the wife of one of them; it is also for a warehouse,
where all the spare implements and stores are kept.
Besides these houses we have two good stables, one holding
fourteen horses, the other the remaining six (also the cows, pigs,
and chickens during the winter); piggeries; and last, but not
least, my chicken-house. A - - has presented me with a dozen hens,
for which he had to pay thirteen dollars, which with the seven old
ones are my special charge, and are an immense amusement and
occupation.
His farm here, as he has other land elsewhere besides the Boyd
Farm, consists of 480 acres; half of one section and a fourth of
another.
All the surveyed country in the North-west Territory has been
divided into townships thirty-six square miles, and they again
into sections of a mile square, which are marked out by the
surveyors with earth mounds thrown up (at the four corners) in the
form of right-angled pyramids, with a post about three feet high
stuck in the centre. The mounds are six feet square, with a square
hole on each side. To the marking of sections a similar mound is
erected, only of smaller dimensions.
The sections are numbered as shown by the following diagram: -
N
+ - - + - - + - - + - - + - - + - - +
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 |
+ - - + - - + - - + - - + - - + - - +
| 30 | 29 | 28 | 27 | 26 | 25 |
+ - - + - - + - - + - - + - - + - - +
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
W + - - + - - + - - + - - + - - + - - + E
| 18 | 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 |
+ - - + - - + - - + - - + - - + - - +
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
+ - - + - - + - - + - - + - - + - - +
| 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
+ - - + - - + - - + - - + - - + - - +
S
The Townships are numbered in regular order northerly from the
International Boundary line or 49th parallel of latitude, and lie
in ranges numbered east and west from a certain meridian line,
drawn northerly from the said 49th parallel, from a point ten
miles or thereabouts westward of Pembina.
When the Government took over the territory from the Hudson Bay
Company in 1870, two entire sections in every fifth township and
one and three-quarters in every other, were assigned to the
Company as compensation. There were also two sections reserved as
endowment to public education, and are called School Lands, and
held by the minister of the Interior, and can only be sold by
public auction.
The same was done for the half-breeds; 240 acres were allotted to
them in every parish. Their farms are mostly on the rivers, along
the banks of which all the early settlers congregated; and to give
each claimant his iota the farms had to be cut up into long strips
of four miles long by four hundred yards wide.
