Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 3).pdf/156

 case we said: “We hold that the alleged description is wholly insufficient as a description of the lands in question, or of any lands, and that it cannot be sustained as a means of indentifying the lands for purposes of assessment for taxation, or for the ulterior purpose of transferring the title of the reality from the general owner to the tax-title holder and his successors in interest. The alleged description is neither written out in words, nor is the same expressed by charters or abbreviations commonly used by conveyancers, or generally understood and used by the people at large, in describing land. The description of realty placed in the assessment roll is the means of identifying or describing the land for all the subsequent steps in the process of taxation and sale, if a sale is made. The official who makes the tax list and duplicate and the official who collects the tax, or sells and conveys the land, or certifies to its redemption from sale, are governed by the original description in the roll, and are not authorized by law to change the same;” citing Keith v. Hayden, 26 Minn. 212, 2 N. W. Rep. 495. There has no case been cited, and we know of none, which directly passes upon the sufficiency of the particular descriptions in question aside from those we have mentioned. No authority can be shown, we think, which sustains such descriptions, and it is significant (in view of the claim made by defendant’s counsel that such descriptions are in general and common use, not only in this state but in all states where the government system of land surveys exists) that the validity of such descriptions has never been drawn into review in the courts of last resort except in the two cases cited, and then only to be condemned as unauthorized by general usage. In the cases cited, no evidence was introduced tending to prove or disprove the existence of the alleged general usage in question, and yet both courts declared and held, distinctly and emphatically, that no such general usage did exist. In Keith v. Hayden, the court says: “There is no general usage of this kind; neither is this the import of the letters and figures employed, according to the common and ordinary usage of the English language, as the same is spoken or written