Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/376

 364 FEDERAL REPORTBB. �the interior, the commissioner wrote to the surveyor general advising him of Buch decision, and directing him to fumish that office with a "certified diagram of the claim of said So- ciety" as confirmed by the same. In obedience to this direc- tion the surveyor general, on June 17, 1875, certified to the commissioner a diagram of the first of the three surveys, as being a plat of the survey of the Methodist mission claim at The Dalles, and upon this the patent was issued, as appears therefrom. Whatever, then, may be thought of the correct- ness of the survey, the proposition that the patent was issued •without a plat of survey approved by the surveyor general, in the face of these facts, is not tenable. �It is also contended by the plaintiffs that if the defendant is entitled to take under the act as a missionary society at ail, the grant should be confined to the land actually oocupied by.it. �Thic grant, unlike the one made by the donation act, is not of the 640 acres occupied by the donee, but of the quanr tity pom-pied, not esceeding that nuraber of acres. Still it coljld not have been the intention of oongress in the ope case more than the other that the occupation of a donee should be linaited to his actual enclosure and tillage. The donation act of September 27, 18.^Q, (9 St. 497,) was in this respect a sort of supplement to the act of August 14, 1848, and didjfor the settlera at large what the fornjer had done for the mis- sionaries. It gave to the settler then residing in the terri- tory, for himself and wife, the section of land which he had resided upon and cultivated for four consecutive years. But this residence and cultivation were not required to inolude the whole section. In fact, the actual enclosure and cultivation were often confined to a very few acres ; while the remaining portion was only occupied for grazing, and sometimes hardly that. �Very early in the settlement of this country it became a cardinal rule that a settTement on the public lands should not include any more than a section. This vras probably sug- gested by the terms of the Oregon bill introduced into the senate by Dr. Linn, of Missouri, in 1842, which, among other ��� �