Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/343

 OAHN V. BÀBNES. 331 �prescribed the grànt reverts. But, however that may be, the power to determine what land passes under the grant as being "wet and unfit for cultivation" still rests with the secretary. �The statutes of the United S'.ates provide that the secre- tary of the interior is charged with the supervision — final direction— of the public business relating to the public lands, and that the commissioner of the general land-office shall perform, under his direction, ail the executive duties apper- taining, among ôther things, to "the issuing of patents for ail grants of land under the authority of the government," (sec- tions 441, 463, Eev. St. ;) and by section 2 of the swamp- land act it is made his especial duty to determine what lands are within its purview. �The wagon-road grant was a grant in prasenti also of the odd sections for six miles on either side of the road wherever it might be located between the termini named, which, so soon as the Une of the road was designated, attached to such sections within the prescribed limits on either side of said line and took effect from the date thereof, Skulenherg v. Harri- man, 21 Wall. 60. But the grant to the wagon road being subsequent in point of time to that of the swamp land, the former could not attach to any legal subdivision within the operation of the latter unless they had reverted to the United States for want of selection in due time, which could not have occurred in this case, as the surveys were not extended over the premises until 1869. And this is so from the very nature of the case, ratherthanfrom the effect of the clause in section 1 of the wagon-road grant, excepting from its operation "ail lands heretofore reserved to the United States by act of con- gress or other competent authority,"— for the words "reserved to the United States" do not describe or inelude lands "sold or otherwise disposed of," as did the reservation in the rail- way grant cited by counsel from By. Co. v. Fremont County, 9 Wall. 94, but only Indian and military reservations and the like, — lands withdrawn from the public domain for some spe- cial use of the United States, and not lands already disposed of to States or others. It is as impossible that two grants shonld ����