Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 3).pdf/168

 upon this point, but we are aware that some cases hold that, where the owner furnishes the exact description involved, he is estopped from questioning its sufficiency.

In conclusion we feel like saying that every member of this court has given to this case his very best and most faithful consideration. We appreciate the importance of the questions involved, relating, as they do, to the public revenues, and bearing vitally, also, upon the stability of land titles in this state. We readily concede that views differing from ours may be and are honestly entertained; but we have concluded that stability in a tule of property, when once deliberately adjudged, is of prime importance, and hence have adhered to the views laid down in the previous decisions. Moreover, we believe that comparatively a small number of the whole population have any degree of familiarity with the symbol writing in question. Those who have close relations with the local land offices, and with such of the county officers as have copied and adopted the symbol writing from the land officers, are indeed strongly impressed with the idea that all of the people understand and use this mode of describing land. We cannot come to the same conclusion. We think symbol writing in tax records has already disappeared, and is no longer employed in county offices in this state, and our belief is strong that when the public land has been disposed of, and the local land offices have performed their limited and temporary functions and have been removed further west, it will be found that symbol writing in describing realty will have failed to become ingrafted upon the vernacular language. We feel justified in this conclusion from our observations and experience in the older states of the west. If we are mistaken, the remedy can be readily found in the legislative branch of the government, where a statute can be passed to govern future assessments. See “The Elements of Jurisprudence,” by T. E. Holland, p. 54.

The judgment entered below must be reversed, and a new judgment entered, quieting title in the plaintiff, and also setting aside the taxes on the land in question for the years 1886, 1887, and