al 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
_cote_ 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]

[Sidenote: Boatmen tribes or castes.]

In undeveloped countries, where rivers are the chief highways, we
occasionally see the survival of a distinct race of boatmen amid an
intruding people of different stock, preserved in their purity by their
peculiar occupation, which has given them the aloofness of a caste. In
the Kwang-tung province of southern China are 40,000 Tanka boat people,
who live in boats and pile-dwellings in the Canton River. The Chinese,
from whom they are quite distinct, regard them as a remnant of the
original population, which was dislodged by their invasion and forced to
take refuge on the water. They gradually established intercourse with
the conquerors of the land, but held themselves aloof. They marry only
among themselves, have their own customs, and enjoy a practical monopoly
of carrying passengers and messages between the steamers and the shore
at Macao, Hongkong and Canton.[711] In the same way, the middle Niger
abo