Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/673

 cured to the state during the administration of Governor Grover.

From the time when the swamp-land grant was supposed to have lapsed through neglect, as decided by Whiteaker, and apparently coincided in by his successors, up to August 1871, no attention was given to the subject. Grover, however, gave the matter close scrutiny, and discovered that the same act which required the state to select the swamp-lands then surveyed within two years from the adjournment of the legislature next following the date of the act, and which requirement had been neglected, also declared that the land thereafter to be surveyed should be chosen within two years from the adjournment of the legislature next following a notice by the secretary of the interior to the governor that the surveys had been completed and confirmed. No such notice having been given, the title of the state to the swamp-lands was held to be intact, and a complete grant and indefeasible title were vested in the state by the previous acts of congress, which could not be defeated by any failure on the part of the United States to perform an official duty. The small amount of swamp-lands surveyed in 1860, and which were lost by neglect, could not much affect the grant should it never be recovered.

In pursuance of these views, the legislature of 1870 passed an act providing for the selection and sale of the swamp and overflowed lands of the state. This act made it the duty of the land commissioner for Oregon, to wit, the governor, to appoint persons to make the selections of swamp and overflowed lands, and make returns to him, when they would be mapped,