Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1877.djvu/24

XXII in the manner aforesaid, and the payment of the additional sum of one dollar per acre, the applicant shall be entitled to a patent for said tract

Third. That all lands, exclusive of timber and mineral lands, which will not, without irrigation, produce some agricultural crop, shall be deemed desert lands.

While it is desirable that desert lands should be reclaimed for agricultural purposes by irrigation, and that proper encouragement be offered to that end, a wise regard for the public interests does not permit, wherever there is public land capable of successful cultivation in small farms, and of thus furnishing homesteads for people of limited means, that extraordinary facilities should be given to the capitalist to acquire such land for the formation of large estates. It is believed that the proof required by the above-named act, as to the quality of the lands, is not sufficient to prevent lands not desert from being acquired under it, while the entire absence of any provision prescribing what portion of land in the tract entered shall be irrigated, the cultivation and improvements which shall constitute reclamation, the penalties or forfeitures for abandonment, or sale of the applicant's interest before making final proof and payment, renders the act liable to be taken advantage of for objects not contemplated by it nor compatible with the public interest.

I therefore recommend that the act be so amended as to require, before the entry is allowed, that the desert character and quality of the tract sought to be entered shall be established by competent testimony to the satisfaction of the register and receiver of the district in which the land is situated, after notice by publication for four successive weeks to adverse claimants, if any there be; that the quantity or portion of the land in the tract to be irrigated, cultivated, and improved shall be specifically defined; that a neglect or failure to irrigate and improve the quantity or portion of the land in said tract specified, for the period of six months at any one time, shall be considered an abandonment of the same.

While a party who has made an entry under said law has no more right to sell or contract to sell, or in any manner encumber the right or interest which he has acquired, than a homestead or pre-emption settler has under either the homestead or pre-emption laws before final proof, still, as there seems to be some misapprehension as to the rights of applicants on this subject, I would recommend that the law be so amended as expressly to prohibit the selling or contracting to sell, or encumbering of the right or interest which the applicant acquires, until final proof and payment therefor has been made; and that, upon satisfactory evidence being produced of the violation of such prohibition, the applicant shall be deemed to have forfeited all his right and interest therein, and thereupon his entry shall be canceled.

The enactment of some law providing a more speedy settlement of the private land-claims in the territory (except California) acquired from Mexico by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, and the Gadsden