We left Montreal early in the afternoon of the 27th, in company with Mr.
and Mrs. Bailey. He is one of the managers of the Grand Trunk Railway,
and came with us as far as Quebec, as a sort of guard of honour or
escort, papa having been specially commended to the care of the
_employes_ on this line. Both he and his wife are English. We crossed
the St. Lawrence in a steam-ferry to join the railway, and as long as
it was light we had a most delightful journey through a highly
cultivated country, covered with small farms, which came in quick
succession on both sides of the road. These farms are all the property
of French Canadians, and on each one there is a wooden dwelling-house,
with barns and out-houses attached to it, and the land runs down from
the front of the tenement to the railroad. There is no hedge to be seen
anywhere, and these long strips of fields looked very like allotment
lands in England, though on a larger scale. These proprietors have been
possessors of the soil from the time of the first settlement of the
French in Canada, and the farms have suffered from the subdivision of
property consequent on the French law of succession. They are so close
together that, when seen at a distance, the houses look like a
continuous line of street as far as the eye can reach, but we soon lost
sight of them in the obscurity occasioned by forests and the approach of
night.
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