Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1878.djvu/13

Rh A quantity greater by 3,836,411.18 acres than that disposed of the preceding year. This increase is in the homestead entries for actual settlement and for timber culture.

The cash receipts were $2,022,532.16, an increase of $569,562.93.

During the year 8,041,011.83 acres were surveyed, making, with the quantity previously surveyed, 724,311,477 acres, and leaving yet to be surveyed 1,090,461,171 acres.

In my last annual report I called attention to the necessity of rigorous measures for the suppression of depredations upon the timber lands of the United States. During the past year the employment of special agents for that purpose was continued, and proceedings against depredators instituted, as far as existing laws and the appropriations made by Congress would permit. I regret to say that at times the operations of the department were seriously hampered by the lack of available funds, but appropriations made on April 30 and June 20,1878, rendered the employment of a larger number of agents possible, as well as the making of surveys in the preparation of evidence to sustain prosecutions. The report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office gives a detailed statement of the settlements made, verdicts obtained, and suits still pending.

It was to be expected that the measures taken by this department for the protection of the public timber lands would meet with stubborn opposition on the part of lumbermen and others directly or indirectly interested in those depredations. Here and there the proceedings of the special agents of the department were complained of as oppressive and otherwise improper, and in every instance careful inquiries into the facts were instituted. Such inquiries resulted almost uniformly in the vindication of the agents employed. When it was found that private property had been seized, together with timber unlawfully taken from the public lands, or with lumber manufactured therefrom — which was sometimes unavoidable — prompt restitution was ordered.

An officer of the Treasury Department, detailed for that purpose, was sent to the State of Louisiana, where charges of improper practices on the part of our timber agent had been preferred with particular urgency. The elaborate report rendered by that officer not only justifies the conduct of the agent of this department employed in that State, who while in the discharge of his duty fell a victim to the yellow fever, but it puts the extent of the depredations committed there and the necessity of their suppression in the clearest light. Complaint was also made that our efforts to arrest the wanton destruction of the forests in some of the mountainous Territories of the Northwest had inflicted great hardship upon the settlers there. But there is information in possession of this department showing that no such hardship resulted from the measures taken; that the price of firewood remained the same; that the settlers