he
adjoining woods: which not only exclude the sun, but impoverish the
land by drawing the nourishment from the plants to the adjoining trees.
To obviate this, and many other inconveniences, it would be far better
to lay out settlements, where the face of the country would admit of
it, in square blocks, or parallelograms; to contain two ranges of lots,
with roads at proper distances. The fronts of the lots to be extended,
and their length contracted. The lots to abut on the road; and extend
back one-half the depth of the block:--The rear of the lots in one
range, abutting on the rear of lots in the next range. Or else, the
settlements might be divided into squares and sections, after the
method adopted by the United States in laying out new settlements, of
which the following is a short outline:

Their townships are laid out in blocks of six miles square, the whole
area containing 23,040 acres. Those squares are divided into thirty-six
smaller squares or sections of a mile square, containing each 640
acres. The sections are numbered from right to left, and left to right,
as in the following plan:--

six miles long. s
+----+----+----+----+----+----+ i
| 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | x
+----+----+----+----+----+----|
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | m
+----+----+----+----+----+----+ i
| 18 | 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | l
+----+----+----+----+----+----+ e
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | s
+----+----+----+----+----+----+
| 30 | 29 | 28 | 27 | 26 | 25 | l
+----+----+----+----+----+----+ o
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | n
+----+----+----+----+----+----+ g
.

The sections are again subdivided into quarters and half quarters. A
quarter section is half a mile square, and contains one hundred and
sixty acres. The sixteenth section of each township is reserved to
maintain schools, and the sections two, five, twenty, twenty-three,
thirty, and thirty-three, are sold in half-quarters.

By this method the limits of counties and parishes are accurately
defined; the settlements are every where interspersed with roads, and
each man's field, instead of a narrow strip of irregular figure and
uncertain boundary, is a square laying compact and near a road, whose
contents are always easily ascertained. The rectangular method of
laying out settlements, cannot always be followed, on account of
rivers, &c. which will cause gores and inequalities; but whenever it
can be adopted