Gulliver’s Travels vocabulary

a system or method of describing land, real property (in contrast to personal property) or real estate. Newer systems include rectangular (government survey), lot and block (recorded plat) and Torrens (used in Hawaii, California, Colorado, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada). The system has been used in England for many centuries, and is still used there in the definition of general boundaries. The system is also used in the Canadian province of Ontario. By custom, it was applied in the original Thirteen Colonies that became the United States, and in many other land jurisdictions based on English common law, including Zimbabwe, South Africa, India and Bangladesh.

Typically the system uses physical features of the local geography, along with directions and distances, to define and describe the boundaries of a parcel of land. The boundaries are described in a running prose style, working around the parcel in sequence, from a point of beginning, returning to the same point; compare with the oral ritual of beating the bounds. It may include references to other adjoining parcels (and their owners), and it, in turn, could also be referred to in later surveys. [...]