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Rh the claimant of neither having received juridical possession from the Mexican authorities. The record showed that the Rancho La Carbonera had the older grant, and under the doctrine of relation as laid down in Grisar vs. McDowell,(6 Wall., 380,) and Lynch vs. Bernal, (9 Wall., 315,) it had also the older confirmation. The Supreme Court of the United States having also ruled, in United States vs. Amijo, (5 Wall., 444,) that the right of selection could not be exercised so as to defeat the equitable prior rights of others, it was held by this Office that La Carbonera having the older grant and confirmation, had the prior equity and was therefore first entitled to select its quantity of land, and that for the land thus selected within its exterior boundaries and interfering with the Rancho Canada del Rincon a patent should issue reciting said interference.

Aflirmed May 21, 1873.

Mission La Purisima, José Ramon Malo, confirmee.—In this case it was decided on appeal that the first section of the act of June 14, 1860, relative to the publication of notice of surveys for four weeks in two newspapers, required that for some part of the four weeks the notice should be simultaneously publishing in both newspapers.

During the year ending June 30, 1873, the surveys of twenty-three private land-claims were received from the United States surveyor-gen eral for California, and during the same period forty-two patents for similar claims were prepared by this Office, and transmitted, for delivery, to the parties in interest.

I have the honor again to call attention to the condition of private land-claims in the remainder of the territory acquired by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and also to similar claims located in the territory, acquired by the treaty commonly known as the Gadsden purchase. Some provision for the speedy adjustment of these claims should be made at an early day, so that parties, whose rights are guaranteed by treaty, may be enabled to obtain a United States title to their possessions, as in the case of like claims in California, and the United States be given an opportunity to show the invalidity of such claims as may now be held under fraudulent Mexican or Spanish grants.

By a decision dated July 29, 1872, in the matter of John B. Chapman's donation claim in Washington Territory, it was held by this Office that, although settlement was made in good faith in June, 1851 and inhabitation and the other requirements of the law complied with up to June 1852, yet the claimant, Chapman, had now no title thereto, either legal or equitable, it appearing by the evidence produced that at the date last named he left Washington Territory with the intention of abandoning his claim, and that for a period of nearly eighteen years thereafter he neither resided on nor asserted title to the tract thus abandoned. In affirming this decision, the Hon. Secretary of the Interior, in his letter of May 23d, 1873, remarks: "I agree with you in the conclusion at which you have arrived, (that Chapman abandoned his claim when he left the Territory in the summer of 1852, and forfeited all right therein he then had or might have acquired")

A large number of donation claims in the State of Oregon, and in Washington Territory, have been examined, and five hundred and four