Page:History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana.djvu/114

 both legislatures in the matter of amount of bounty and limit of time.^^ A surveyor-general and register and receiver were given to Washington; in no other wise was a separate land system granted; but the new territory was entitled to the same privileges with Ore- gon, no more or different.^*

^^Hisf. Or., ii., chap, x., this series. The points gained by an act of con- gress passed July 17, 1854, were the withdrawal of town sites from the pro- visions of the donation act, and subjecting them to the operation of the act of May 23, 1844, * for the relief of citizens of towns upon lands of the United States, under certain circumstances,' and the reduction of the time of occu- pancy before purchase to one year; the repeal of that portion of the land law which made void contracts for the sale of land before patent issued, proxided that sales should not be valid unless the vendor should have resided four years upon the land; the extension of the preemption privilege to Oregon and Washington; the extension of the donation privilege to 1855; the grant of two townships of land for university purposes; the donation of 160 acres of land to orphans whose parents, had they lived, would have been entitled to a donation; and the appointment of a register and receiver for each of the two territories. Wash. Ter. Statutes, 1854, 53-5.

2* The subject of amended land laws for their territory was not permitted to drop with this attempt. When the privileges of the old donation act ex- pired in 1855, a petition signed by 200 settlers was presented to congress, asking that the clause in that act which required them to reside for 4 years consecutively on their claims before receiving a certificate should be ex- punged, and that they be allowed to purchase them at the rate of |1.25 an acre, counting the value of their improvements as payment; the amount of labor bestowed being taken as evidence of an intention to remain a permanent settler. Objmpia Pioneer and Dem., Aug. 19, 1855. No change was made as therein requested. Tilton, the surveyor-general appointed for Washington, was directed to join with the surveyor-general of Oregon in starting the sur- vey of his territory, carrying out the work as already begun, and using it as a basis for organizing the Washington surveys in that part of the country where the settlers most required a survey. U. S. H. Ex. Doc, vol. i., pt i., 33d cong. 1st sess. In his first report, Sept. 20, 1855, Tilton asked for increased com- pensation per mile for contractors, owing to the difficulty of surveying in Washington, where one enormous forest was found growing amidst the decay- ing ruins of another, centuries old, in consequence of which horses could not be used, and provisions had to be packed upon the backs of men, at a great cost. Id., vol. i., pt i., 292, 34th cong. 1st ses^.

W. W. De Lacy ran the standard meridian from Vancouver through to the northern boundary of Washington. The Willamette meridian fell in the water nearly the whole length of the Sound, compelling him to make re- peated ofisets to the east. One of these ofi'sets was run on the line between range 5 and 6 east of the Willamette meridian, which line runs through the western part of Snohomish City. After the close of the Indian war, De Lacy ran and blazed out the line of the military road from Steilacoom to Bellingham Bay, with the assistance of only one Indian, Pirns, who afterward murdered a settler on the Snohomish River, named Carter, il/orsf'.s Wash. Ter., MS., xx. 36-7. The total amount surveyed imder the Oregon office was 1,876 miles, the amount surveyed under Tilton previous to Dec. 1855, 3,063 miles, and the quantity proposed to be surveyed in the next 2 years, 5,688 miles, all west of the Cascade Range. The Indian wars, however, stopped work for about that length of time. It was difficult to find deputies who would undertake the work, on account of Indian hostilities, even after the war was declared at an end. Deputy Surveyor Dorainick Hunt was murdered on