mission resident mineral surveyors for different districts where, isolated from each other, and absolutely inconvenient for one surveyor promptly to attend to the several calls for surveying in such localities, the compensation not to exceed ten dollars per diem, including all expenses incident thereto. Such surveyors shall enter into bonds of $10,000 for the faithful performance of their duties in the survey of such claims as the Surveyor-General may be required to execute in pursuance of the aforesaid law and these instructions.

The fourth section contemplates the location and entry of a mine upon unsurveyed lands, stipulating for the surveys of public lands to be adjusted to the lines of the claims, according to the location and possession and plat thereof. In surveying such claims, the Surveyor-General is authorized to vary from the rectangular form to suit the circumstances of the country, local rules, laws, and customs of miners. The extent of the locations made from and after the passage of the act shall, however, not exceed two hundred feet in length along the vein for each locator, with an additional claim for discovery to the discoverer of the lode, with the right to follow such vein to any depth, with all its dips, variations, and angles, together with a reasonable quantity of surface for the convenient working of the same as fixed by local rules: Provided, No person may make more than one location on the same lode, and no more than three thousand feet shall be taken in any one claim by any association of persons.

The deputy surveyors should be scientific men, capable of examining and reporting fully on every lode they will survey, and to bring in duplicate specimens of the ore, one of which you will send to this office and the other the Surveyor-General will keep to be ultimately turned over with the surveying archives to the State authorities.

The surveyors of mineral claims, whether on surveyed or unsurveyed lands, must designate those claims by a progressive series of numbers, beginning with No. 37, so as to avoid interference in that respect with the regular sectional series of numbers in each township; and shall designate the four corners of each claim, where the side lines of the same are known, so that such corners can be given by either trees, if any are found standing in place, or any corner rocks exist in place, or posts may be set diagonally and deeply imbedded, with four sides facing adjoining claims, sufficiently flattened to admit of inscriptions. thereon; but where the corners are unknown, it will be sufficient to place a well built solid mound at each end of the claim. The beginning corner of the claim nearest to any corners of the public surveys is to be connected by course and distance, so as to ascertain the relative position of each claim in reference to township and range when the same have been surveyed; but in those parts

of the surveying district where no such lines have as yet been extended, it will be the duty of Surveyors-General to have the same surveyed and marked, at least so far as standard and township lines are concerned, at the per mileage allowed, so as to embrace the mineral region, and to connect the nearest corners of the mineral claims with the corners of the public surveys.

Should it, however, be found impracticable to establish independent base and meridian lines, or to extend township lines over the region containing mineral claims required to be surveyed under the law, then, and in that case, you will cause to be surveyed in the first instance such a claim, the initial point of which will start either from a confluence of waters or such natural and permanent objects as will unmistakably identify the point of the beginning of the survey of the claim upon which other surveys will depend.

SEC. 5. Provides that in cases where the laws of Congress are silent upon the subject of rules for working mines, respecting easements, drainage, and other necessary means to the complete development of the same, the local Legislature of any State or Territory may provide them, and in order to embody such enactments into patents, you are directed to communicate any such laws to this office.

SEC. 6. Should adverse claimants to any mine appear before the approval of the survey, all further proceedings shall be stayed until a final settlement and adjudication are had in the courts of the rights of possession to such claim, except where the parties agree to settlement or a portion of the premises is not in dispute, when a patent may issue as in other cases.

SEC. 7. Provides for such additional land districts as may be

necessary.

SEC. 8. For the right of way.

SEC. 9. For the protection of rights to the use of water for mining, agricultural, manufacturing, or other purposes, for the right of way for the construction of ditches and canals; and makes parties constructing such work (after the passage of this act) to the injury of settlers, liable in damages.

SEC. 10. Homesteads made prior to the passage of this act by citizens of the United States, or persons who have declared their intention to become citizens, but on which lands no valuable mines of gold, silver, cinnabar, or copper have been discovered, are protected, so that settlers or owners of such homesteads shall have a right of pre-emption thereto, in quantity not to exceed one hundred and sixty acres, at $1.25 per acre, or to avail themselves of the Homestead act and acts amendatory thereof.

SEC. 11. Stipulates that upon the survey of the lands in question, the Secretary of the interior may set apart such portions as

are clearly agricultural, and thereafter subjects such agricultural tracts to pre-emption and sale as other public lands.

In order to enable the department properly to give effect to this section of the law, you will cause your deputy surveyors to describe in their field notes of surveys, in addition to the data required to be noted in the printed Manual of Surveying Instructions on pages 17 and 18, the agricultural lands, and represent the same on township plats by the designation of "Agricultural lands."

It is to be understood that there is nothing obligatory on claimants to proceed under this statute, and that where they fail to do so, there being no adverse interest, they hold the same relations to the premises they may be working which they did before the passage of this act, with the additional guarantee that they possess the right of occupancy under the statute.

The foregoing presents such views as have occurred to this office in considering the prominent points of the statute, and will be followed by further instructions as the rulings in actual cases, and experience in the administration of the statute may from time to time suggest.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

Jos. S. WILSON, Commissioner. To the United States Registers and Receivers and Surveyors-General.

AN ACT granting the right of way to ditch and canal owners over the public lands and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the mineral lands of the public domain, both surveyed and unsurveyed, are hereby declared to be free and open to exploration and occupation by all citizens of the United States, and those who have declared their intention to become citizens, subject to such regulations as may be prescribed by law, and subject also to the local customs or rules of miners in the several mining districts, so far as the same may not be in conflict with the laws of the United States.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That whenever any person or association of persons claim a vein or lode of quartz, or other rock in place, bearing gold, silver, cinnabar, or copper, having previously occupied and improved the same according to the local custom or rules of miners in the district where the same is situated, and having expended in actual labor and improvements thereon an amount of not less than one thousand dollars, and in regard to whose possession there is no controversy or opposing claim, it shall and may be lawful for said claimant or association of claimants to file in the local land office a diagram of the same, so extended laterally or otherwise as to conform to the local laws, customs, and rules of miners, and to enter such tract and receive a patent therefor, granting such mine, together with the right to follow such vein or lode with its dips, angles, and variations to any depth, although it may enter the land adjoining, which land adjoining shall be sold subject to this condition.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That upon the filing of the diagram as provided in the second section of this act, and posting the same in a conspicuous place on the claim, together with a notice of intention to apply for a patent, the Register of the land office shall publish a notice of the same in a newspaper published nearest to the location of said claim, and shall also post such notice in his office for the period of ninety days; and after the expiration of said period, if no adverse claim shall have been filed, it shall be the duty of the Surveyor-General, upon application of the party, to survey the premises and make a plat thereof, indorsed with his approval, designating the number and description of the location, the value of the labor and improvements, and the character of the vein exposed; and upon the payment to the proper officer of five dollars per acre, together with the cost of such survey, plat, and notice, and giving satisfactory evidence that said diagram and notice have been posted on the claim during said period of ninety days, the Register of the land office shall transmit to the General Land Office said plat, survey, and description, and a patent shall issue for the same thereupon. But said plat, survey, or description shall in no case cover more than one vein or lode, and no patent shall issue for more than one vein or lode, which shall be expressed in the patent issued.

SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That when such location and entry of a mine shall be upon unsurveyed lands, it shall and may be lawful, after the extension thereto of the public surveys, to adjust the surveys

to the limits of the premises according to the location and possession and plat aforesaid; and the Surveyor-General may, in extending the surveys, vary the same from a rectangular form to suit the circumstances of the country and the local rules, laws, and customs of miners: Provided, That no location hereafter made shall exceed two hundred feet in length along the vein for each locator, with an additional claim for discovery to the discoverer of the lode, with the right to follow such vein to any depth, with all its dips, variations, and angles, together with a reasonable quantity of surface for the convenient working of the same, as fixed by local rules: And provided further, That no person may make more than one location on the same lode, and not more than three thousand feet shall be taken in any one claim by any association of persons.

SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That as a further condition of sale, in the absence of necessary legislation by Congress, the local Legislature of any State or Territory may provide rules for working mines involving easements, drainage, and other necessary means to their complete development; and those conditions shall be fully expressed in the patent.

SEC. 6. And be it further enacted, That whenever any adverse claimants to any mine located and claimed as aforesaid shall appear before the approval of the survey, as provided in the third section of this act, all proceedings shall be stayed until a final settlement and adjudication in the courts of competent jurisdiction of the rights of possession to such claim, when a patent may issue as in other cases.

SEC. 7. And be it further enacted, That the President of the United States be, and is hereby authorized to establish additional land districts, and to appoint the necessary officers under existing laws, wherever he may deem the same necessary for the public convenience in executing the provisions of this act.

SEC. 8. And be it further enacted, That the right of way for the construction of highways over public lands, not reserved for public uses, is hereby granted.

SEC. 9. And be it further enacted, That whenever by priority of possession, rights to the use of water for mining, agricultural, manufactur ing, or other purposes, have vested and accrued, and the same are recognized and acknowledged by the local customs, laws, and the decisions of courts, the possessors and owners of such vested rights shall be maintained and protected in the same; and the right of way for the construction of ditches and canals for the purposes aforesaid is hereby acknowledged and confirmed: Provided, however, That whenever, after the passage of this act, any person or persons shall, in the construction of any ditch or canal, injure or damage the possession of any settler on the public domain, the party committing such injury or damage shall be liable to the party injured for such injury or damage.

SEC. 10. And be it further enacted, That wherever, prior to the passage of this act, upon the lands heretofore designated as mineral lands, which have been excluded from survey and sale, there have been homesteads made by citizens of the United States, or persons who have declared their intention to become citizens, which homesteads have been made, improved, and used for agricultural purposes, and upon which there have been no valuable mines of gold, silver, cinnabar, or copper discovered, and which are properly agricultural lands, the said settlers