Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/167

Rh chose to do so. The fact that in the terms of the grant by Congress only "swamp and overflowed lands, made unfit thereby for cultivation" were turned over to the state; and the further fact that "the proceeds of said lands, whether by sale or direct appropriation in kind, shall be applied exclusively as far as necessary to the end of the reclaiming of said lands" — these conditions in the grant cut no figure in the policy advised by the Oregon governor. Why should they ? Oregon's "swamp lands" would be spoiled by drainage — that selected by her agents "was of such a character that drainage would destroy its value entirely." Then, too, the courts seem to have held that the state could not be compelled to apply the proceeds from its grant to reclamation. A state official in charge of the matter of selection taking such a position would naturally not make much progress with the national government towards perfecting the title of the state to its swamp lands.

Passing on now to a glimpse of the swamp land situation in the eighties. During Governor Thayer's administration (1878- 1882) the state and national authorities got together for the first time in the making of swamp land selections. With agents working in harmony on the field and in the examination of the lists of earlier selections, the approval of nearly a quarter of a million acres was secured by the end of 1882 — some twenty- two years after the extension of the grant to Oregon. There are strange things to relate in the swamp land history during the eighties. Under the law of 1870 there was no limit to the number of acres that would be sold to any purchaser. The law of 1878 did limit the number to 320 acres, but did not take effect, in the opinion of the state land boards, to hinder the consummation of previous sales if there had been so much as an application of the most indefinite character made prior to 1879. At any rate, the reports of the state land board for the early eighties show that it was honoring applications made under the law of 1870, issuing certificates of sales and receiving payments on such sales — even the initial 20 per cent