road allowance.]

This was a bad law, because many of these lines crossing high hills,
swamps or lakes, were impracticable for road-purposes: many thousand
pounds consequently were entirely and uselessly thrown away: besides,
it opened a door for perjury.

Land-speculators would employ a third party to perform their settlement
duties; all they required to obtain the deed, or "lift" as it is called
in Canadian parlance, was the sworn certificate for cutting the road,
allowances, and the payment of certain fees to Government. The
consequence of this was, that many false certificates were sworn to, as
few persons or magistrates would be at the trouble and expense of
travelling thirty or forty miles back into an uninhabited part of the
country, to ascertain if the parties had sworn truly or not.

A magistrate in my neighbourhood told me that a Yankee chopper came to
him one day and demanded to be sworn on a settlement duty certificate,
which he did to the following effect, "that he had cut a chain between
two posts opposite lots so and so, in the concession of ----- township.
The road allowances are a chain in width, and posts are planted and
marked on each side of the concession, at the corners of each lot.

"I had some suspicions," he said, "in my own mind that the fellow had
sworn falsely, so I determined to ascertain the truth. I knew a person
residing within a mile or two of the place, to whom I wrote for
information, when I found, as I expected, that not a tree bad been cut
on the line. I therefore summoned the Yankee, on the information of the
farmer, to appear before a brother magistrate and myself to answer for
his delinquency.