in each of which the laws were to be made by the inhabitants thereof. The separation took place in 1791, at which time the population of Upper Canada was about 20,000 souls; that of Lower Canada a little over 100,000. The province of Quebec had been governed by the ordinances of a governor and council; but, from 1791, both provinces were equally endowed with a local legislature, although in both, the governors selected and maintained their councils without the acknowledgment that the confidence of the house of assembly was a constitutional necessity, until their reünion in 1841.

ROADS.

The development of the Transportation service in any new country is not more dependent upon the advance in civilization of its colonists than upon its physical geography and climate. The possession of capital and a knowledge of the arts, are, for a time at least, often valueless in the face of obstacles presented by rapid rivers, mountain ranges, trackless forests, or quantities of snow. Time is as necessary as money to prepare the way for the superior vessel or vehicle; and thus, to the European in America, the simple expedients of the savage indigène are as applicable as the camel to the desert, the dog-sledge for the Esquimaux, or the ironless carts of the "Bois Brulés" in Rupert's Land.

Although the existence of roads for the passage of wheeled vehicles dates from the most remote history, it would seem that their early construction was for warlike or for state rather than for commercial purposes-for chariots and trophies and engines of war; perhaps, also, for the transport of materials for monuments, temples, &c. The Assyrian sculptures show that wagons and carts, drawn by mules and oxen, were used; but their land trade, we know, was principally carried on by caravans of loaded camels, horses, mules, and asses. Wagons were used to bring down the

aged patriarch, "the wives, and the little ones" into the land of Goshen, but their supplies were borne upon the backs of animals. Egypt and Assyria were rainless countries, traversed by great rivers, watered by irrigation, and supplied with numerous canals giving water transportation for internal traffic. Separated by the mountainous regions of the Holy Land, their interchange of commerce was best conducted by the "ships of the desert;" for movable sand has ever been one of the greatest impediments to roadmaking.

The wonderful roads of the Romans, carried straight over hill and dale in such a manner as to be of little service for wheels, were more military than commercial. Inasmuch as the Roman knowledge of road-making was derived from the Carthaginians, ancient colonists from Tyre, it is probable that, notwithstanding the obstacles which the rugged landscape of Canaan opposed to commercial highways, we may trace the origin of paved roads to the land where Pharaoh's wagons were sent when Israel went down into Egypt. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive how the cedars of Lebanon could be transported from Joppa to Jerusalem without a graded road. Two thousand years have not effaced those adamantine lines which the Romans engraved and inlaid upon the face of, three continents, for some of them are in use to this day; and, until the discovery of America, it was supposed that as road-makers they had no superiors. A Roman road was often three feet thick, consisting of three courses, of about one foot in thickness each, of coarse concrete masonry, gravel, and cut-stone paving:-sometimes their roads were wholly formed by a species of "macadamizing" with the addition of a cement forming a very hard concrete. Of such roads there were about fifty distinct ones with an aggregate length of 14,000 miles in Italy alone, besides those in the provinces.

In point of magnificence, however, the Incas of Peru

surpassed even the Emperors of Rome. That narrow fringe of sea-coast was traversed from north to south by two great roads,-one in the interior, the other along the Pacific sea-board. The first extended 1,500 to 2,000 miles, having stone pillars set up at intervals of little more than a league, and hostelries or caravansaries at suitable distances-in which respect it was similar to the Babylonian royal road from Sardis to Susa, as described by Herodotus, which it exceeded in length. This road, says Prescott, was carried over pathless sierras covered with snow; through galleries cut for leagues in the living rock; upon suspension bridges, swayed to and fro over raging torrents, by cables of native osier thick as the body of a man; and was conducted across ravines of hideous depth filled up with solid masonry. The coast road, about 300 leagues in length, was carried on an embankment twenty-five yards wide, with a parapet of clay. Trees and odoriferous shrubs were planted along the margin, and streams of water were conducted through aqueducts along its side, to slake the traveler's thirst. Both roads were paved with heavy flags of freestone, some ten feet square, and in some places with pebbles imbedded in a bituminous cement which made a road-bed hard and smooth. It was an evidence of their advanced civilization that persons were stationed at the Incas' "swing" bridges to collect toll from all passers-by, for the maintenance of these the only perishable portions of the work.

ROADS-LOWER CANADA.

The roads of the province of Quebec and of Lower Canada, until 1832, were placed under an officer appointed by the crown called a grand voyer, a sort of surveyorgeneral, who had deputies (sousvoyers) and surveyors under him.* The roads were divided into three classes.

* This office was filled as early as 1689 by the Sieur De Beccancourt, as successor to his father who was probably the first grand voyer of New France.

1. Chemins royaux-Post roads or "front" roads, the soil of which belonged to the crown; these generally traversed the "front" of the seigneuries.

2. Chemins de ceinture et de traverse or back roads, the soil of which belonged to the seigneurs; these ran in the rear and parallel with the royal roads.

3. Chemins de sortie et de communications called, also, "routes" and by-roads. These were cross-roads, connecting those in front and rear. Also, banal roads, which were those leading to the seigneury mill.

All proprietors and holders (seigneurs and censitaires) were obliged to open, make, maintain, and repair, as well in winter as in summer, their "front " roads, across the land held by them. All bridges under four (or six) feet span were to be made by the occupant; but larger ones by the joint labor of the parties interested, the timber being demanded from the nearest property. By joint labor, also, the cross or by-roads and mill-roads were made. In the case of the front roads, ownership or occupancy was considered a sufficient reason for making the unlucky holder construct and maintain the road; but in the case of side roads and others made by joint labor, this proprietorship exempted him from all other contribution, because he furnished the right of way. The grand voyer made semi-annual inspections, and by procès verbal, if confirmed by the quarter sessions, determined the dimensions, ditches, &c., and the "repartition" or apportionment of labor on bridges and routes. He seems to have been a magnificent personage, with the powers almost of a provost-marshal, who literally drove the habitants to the improvement of their ways.

Winter roads in the climate of Lower Canada require special provisions, some of which are demanded by the absurd tenacity with which the habitant clings to a vicious system. Instead of profiting by the example of the township people beside him, he attaches the shafts of his cariole,

berline, or traineau, the running gear of which is a low sledge, by a chain in such a manner that when the draught slackens the shafts fall on the snow. The runner likewise does not follow the horses' feet, so that the road is not beaten for two horses abreast,-and thus must forever remain an inferior or "one-horse" affair. The action of the loose shaft is similar to a horse-rake, and the snow is rolled into "winrows," giving the road a corrugated profile, forming what are called cahots by the French, and "cowholes" by the English; the crater between the opposite peaks being large enough to contain one of those animals. As a penance for thus destroying the road, the law required the habitant to carry shovel, pick, and hoe, and to level the track behind him. It is also obligatory to have the track over ice or open country marked out by evergreen bushes called balises, so that the traveler may not lose his way. Besides the ordinary provisions for "breaking" the winter roads, it is required that on the 1st of December all fences along and abutting the roadside within twenty-five feet, be taken down within two feet of the ground, and kept down until the 1st of April, the posts only left standing; and, when required, balises are to be planted every thirty-six feet.

The road question appears to have early engaged the attention of the Governor and Council of the province of Quebec, and an attempt was made to establish the statute labor system of the English colonies by Governor-General Murray in 1766. His ordinance authorized the surveyor of highways to summon the parishoners with their carts, horses, &c., to work collectively on the roads, which were then specified to be at least fourteen feet wide. In 1777 Guy Carleton passed an ordinance establishing the French system of individual responsibility on the part of each owner and occupier to keep in repair the king's road, then specified at thirty feet wide. By-roads twenty feet wide