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said Smith and Humphreys were not acquainted, either by letters or otherwise, having never seen each others faces, yet judged each others condition, thinking that wee must needs be in one and the same streights; therefore wee desired to see each other, and discourse the business; and when wee came to present the difficulties concerning the quality of the lands, to all intents and purposes, wee lighted uppon one and the same way, in distinguishing the lands into three sorts or parts, vizt, arable and good pasture, course pasture and unprofitable, before seeing or hearing from each other; and soe consulted concerning the premisses, and resolved to put in execution our former purposes, vizt, to exactly measure each denomination, and then to consider of the quality thereof, and to run out by chaine and instrument all bog and mountaine that our bounders (and with the best information wee could get on the place) did call wholly unprofitable, that was without dispute, according to our and their judgements, and to distinguish all the arable and good pasture land, and good wood, from the rest of the course or midling sort of land, that wee did not know what to doe with, but did consider how many acres of that course land was worth one acre of good grazing land in those places where the said lands did lye, judgeing that the most fitt and absolute way, with the advice of the chief inhabitants, and there being allmost the same rule before us, which was of antient standing, vizt, the countrey was divided into plowlands, one plowland being great, and another small, as they were in goodness and badness; for many of the plowlands were but seaventy or eighty acres, others are two or three hundred, and others 2000, sometimes 3 or 4000 acres. Now, at the first division of plowlands, they did endeavour to make them equall in value each to other; but much of the course plowlands being bog, in process of time the inhabitants have improved some of the same, and made it fitt to bear corne; soe that in one of these great plowlands there will be as much arable now as in one of the small ones, besides the number of catle the said great plowlands is able to graze above the small; soe that, ordinaryly and usually, in that countrey, the large plowlands is better then the small, soe that wee could not set downe any generall rule to proceed by plowlands; and then many of them being wholly without arable or any good pasture, and sometimes not any of it that wee could absolutely call unprofitable, following the instructions and informations aforesaid.
Therefore wee did value, as aforesaid, whether ten, twenty, thirty, or the like, was worth one acre of good grazing land in that parish or barrony, and soe
