of the dull checkerboard
monotony there is an almost endless variety of magnificent vistas.]

[Sidenote: and of Western counties.]
If now we look at Livingston County, in which, this township of Deerfield
is situated, we observe that the county is made up of sixteen townships,
in four rows of four; and the next county, Washtenaw, is made up of
twenty townships, in five rows of four. Maps of our Western states
are thus apt to have somewhat of a checkerboard aspect, not unlike
the wonderful country which Alice visited after she had gone through
the looking-glass. Square townships are apt to make square or
rectangular counties, and the state, too, is likely to acquire a more
symmetrical shape.

Nothing could be more unlike the jagged, irregular shape of counties
in Virginia or townships in Massachusetts, which grew up just as it
happened. The contrast is similar to that between Chicago, with its
straight streets crossing at right angles, and Boston, or London, with
their labyrinths of crooked lanes. For picturesqueness the advantage
is entirely with the irregular city, but for practical convenience it
is quite the other way. So with our western lands the simplicity and
regularity of the system have made it a marvel of convenience for the
settlers, and doubtless have had much to do with the rapidity with
which civil governments have been built up in the West. "This fact,"
says a recent writer, "will be appreciated by those who know from
experience the ease and certainty with which the pioneer on the
great plains of Kansas, Nebraska, or Dakota is enabled to select his
homestead or 'locate his claim' unaided by the expensive skill of the
surveyor." [8]

[Footnote 8: Howard, _Local Const. Hist. of U. S._, vol. i. p.
139.]

[Sidenote: Some effects of the system.]
There was more in it than this, however. There was a germ of
organization planted in these western townships, which must be noted
as of great importance. Each township, being six miles in length and
six miles in breadth, was divided into thirty-six numbered sections,
each containing just one square mile, or 640 acres. Each section,
moreover, was divided into 16 tracts of 40 acres each, and sales to
settlers were and are generally made by tracts at the rate of a dollar
and a quarter per acre. For fifty dollars a man may buy forty acres of
unsettled land, provided he will actually go and settle upon it, and
this has proved to be a very effective inducement for en