Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/291

Rh this money after two years of settlement in lieu of the remaining two years, the rights of the claimant in the event of his death to descend to his heirs at law as before. By the amendatory act, widows of men who had they lived would have been entitled to claim under the original act were granted all that their husbands would have been entitled to receive had they lived, and their heirs after them.

By this act also the extent of all government reservations was fixed. For magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other public uses, except for forts, the amount of land was not to exceed twenty acres to each, or at one place, nor for forts more than 640 acres. If in the judgment of the president it should be necessary to include in any reservation the improvements of a settler, their value should be ascertained and paid. The time fixed by this act for the expiration of the privileges of the donation law was April 1855, when all the surveyed public lands left unclaimed should be subject to public sale or private entry, the same as the other public lands of the United States.

The land law of Oregon was again amended in July 1854, in anticipation of the coming into market of the public lands, by extending to Oregon and Washington the preëmption privilege granted September 4, 1841, to the people of the territories, to apply to any unclaimed lands, whether surveyed or not. For the convenience of the later settlers, the time for giving notice to the surveyor general of the time and place of settlement was once more extended to December 1855, or the last moment before the public lands became salable. The act of 1854 declared that the donations thereafter should in no case include a town site or lands settled upon for purposes of business or