Then the uprights, which stand on the
sills two feet apart, form the walls. To these you nail rough
boards on each side, with a layer of tar-paper in between if
building a stable; if a dwelling-house, on the inside you put
against your rough board, laths, and then plaster, on the outside
the tar-paper and siding.
The floor is made by nailing rough boards on the joists, then
tar-paper, and on the top of that tongued and grooved wood fitting
into each other, to make it air-tight.
The roofs, which are almost always pointed on account of the snow,
are composed of rafter 2 x 4, two to three feet apart, with rough
boards across, then tar-paper and shingles; the latter are thin,
flat pieces of wood laid on to overlap each other.
We send you a small sketch of our buildings, which will give you a
better idea of these "frame" houses than any description. They can
be bought ready-made at Chicago, and are sent up with every piece
numbered, so that you have no difficulty in putting them together
again.
Our own house is twenty-four feet square with a lean-to as
kitchen. The dining and drawing-rooms are each twelve feet square,
separated by sliding-doors; A - - 's bedroom, the entrance-hall,
and stair-case dividing the remainder of the house. Our front-door
is not quite in the centre; but, thanks to the verandah, one does
not perceive it. 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.
On every section-line running north and south and to every
alternate running east and west nine feet, or one chain, is left
for roads. Our farm-buildings are not quite in the centre of the
estate, on account of having to make the drive up to the house
beyond the marsh on the eastern boundary.
I have drawn you a plan of the farm; the spaces covered with
little dots are the marshes: the one on the west extends for
miles, and has a creek or dyke dug out by Government to carry off
the water. From the drawing it looks as if there was much marsh
around us; but this bit of ground was the driest that could be
found not already taken up. As it was, A - - purchased it of a man
who has some more land nearer Winnipeg, giving him five dollars
per acre. The Nos. 30 and 31 mean the sections of the townships.
For emigrants wishing to secure a "homestead," which is a grant of
160 acres given by Government free, with the exception of an
office-fee, amounting to ten dollars on all the even-numbered
sections of a town-ship, he will now have to travel much further
west, as every acre around Winnipeg is already secured, and has in
the last two years risen most considerably in value.
