Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/363

Rh, with occasional small prairies and creek-bottoms, which can be purchased for one dollar and a quarter per acre.

In Western Washington, along the coast, and in the northern portion, as well as at some places near the Sound, there is plenty of public land. But the greatest bodies of public land are east of the Cascades, where millions of acres of excellent soil await settlement.

The Pre-emption and Homestead laws of the United States are as follows:

"—Every person, being the head of a family, or widow, or single man over the age of twenty-one years, and being a citizen of the United States, or who shall have declared his intention to become a citizen, is allowed by law to make a settlement on any public land of the United States not appropriated or reserved. In the case of unsurveyed lands, legal inception by actual settlement will take place, but no proceeding toward completion of title can be had until after the land has been surveyed and the surveys returned to the District Land Office. The settler is obliged to erect a dwelling, occupy and improve the land, and make it his or her home. But no person can obtain the benefit of more than one pre-emption right, and no person who is the owner of 320 acres of land in any State or Territory, or who shall abandon his residence on his own land, to live on the public land, can acquire any right of pre-emption. Where the tract on which settlement is made has once been offered at public sale, a declaratory statement as to the fact of settlement must be made at the Land Office within thirty days from the date of settlement, and within one year from that date proof of residence and cultivation must be made, and the land paid for. Where the tract has been surveyed but not offered at public sale, the claimant must file his statement within three months from the date of settlement, and make proof and payment before the day designated by the President for the public sale of the lands.

The quantity of land allowed to one settler by pre-emption, is one quarter-section, or 160 acres, and the price to be paid, is