Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/375

 DALLES CITI V. MISSIUNAEY SOCIETY. 363 �■were very properly regarded as having promoted the settle- ment and civilization of tBe country, and there was no rea- son why, if eongress saw proper to recognize their services either as settlers or missionaries by granting them the land occupied by them as mission stations, it sHould confine the grant to one station to each society when more were occupied byit. �It is also insisted that this patent is void, as not having been issued upon "a plat of survey thereof" approved by the surveyor general, but upon the survey made by the agent of the mission in June, 1860. I think it is plain that a patent issued upon a survey or diagram not approved by the surveyor general would be void. For instance, a patent could not lawfuUy issue upon the survey of the claim by the society itself, because a survey of the grant involved the question of how much land was occupied by the mission, and within what limits. To allov the society to do this would be to make it a judge in its own case. �The grant was only of the land occupied, which might be less than 640 acres, and the surveyor general was required to ascertain the quantity and its boundaries before he could approve a survey therfeof to enable the department to issue a patent therefor. Wheri the surveyor general was authorized to hear the contest between these parties, on February 23, 1860, he direeted a deputy surveyor to make a survey of the promises: (1) As claimed by the society; (2) as actually occupied by it ; and (3) so as to indude its improvements, With 640 acres south of the bluff, in substantially a square form. Plats of these surveys — the second one containing 87 acres — were forw'arded to the commissioner by the surveyor general, with his decision that the society was not entitled to any portion of the premises as a missionary station. Neither of these "plats of survey" were approved by the surveyor gen- eral in the sense of the statute, because they were each made upon a hypothesis — that the society occupied the premises or some portion of them as a mission station on August 14, 1848' — which he at the same time found not to be true. But on March 29, 1875, and after the decision' of the secretary of ��� �