Page:Hempstead's Reports.pdf/387

362   prejudice to third persons," which most strongly implied the necessity of a survey as the only practicable mode of conforming to this requisition. Actual survey and the actual demarcation of boundaries, by persons properly authorized, were the only means by which authentic official evidence could be furnished of the location of grants, and the separation of private from public property.

Without going further back than 1754, the royal regulations and orders, the regulations of the several governors and those of the intendants from that time to the acquisition of Louisiana, affords ample evidence of the truth of the proposition, to say nothing of the uniform usage of the provincial government upon that subject.

It is prescribed in the royal regulations, of October 15, 1754. The sixth clause was based on the fact that many grants, sales, and compositions of lands, made after the year 1700, were held by the grantees, without having been surveyed or valued, and directs that confirmations should be withheld until such surveys and valuations should be executed. The seventh clause also speaks of survey and valuation. 2 Land Laws, 52.

Count O'Reilly, invested with unlimited civil and military powers, was sent by the king of Spain, in 1769, to the province of Louisiana, for the purpose of establishing there a permanent civil and military government. He states that the king had been pleased by his patent issued at Arauguez, the 16th April, 1769, to delegate to him powers to establish in the military, the police, the administration of justice, and in the finances, such regulations as should be conducive to the service and the happiness of his majesty's subjects in the colony. On the 18th February, 1770, O'Reilly established general regulations with regard to granting the royal domains. The 12th is as follows: "All grants shall be made in the name of the king by the governor-general of the province, who will at the same time appoint a surveyor to fix the bounds thereof, both in front and depth, in presence of the judge and of two adjoining settlers, who shall be present at the survey; the above-mentioned five persons shall sign the process verbal which shall be made thereof, and the surveyor shall make three copies of the same, one of