on the Mississippi River must be held to apply to the logs and timber of parties consenting to such control and management, not to logs and timber of parties choosing to keep the control and management of them in their own hands. The Mississippi is a navigable river above the Falls of St. Anthony, and the State could not confer an exclusive use of its waters, or exclusive control and management of logs floating on it, against the consent of their owners. Whilst in Atlee v. Packet Company (21 Wall. 389) we held that a pier obstructing navigation, erected in the river as part of a boom, without license or authority of any kind except such as arises from the ownership of the adjacent shore, was an unlawful structure, we did not mean to intimate that the owner of land on the Mississippi could not have a boom adjoining it for the reception of logs of his own or of others, if he did not thereby impede the free navigation of the stream. Aside from this, we do not think that the State is precluded by any thing in the charter of the company from giving a license to the defendant in error to construct a boom near his lands. Moreover, the United States, having paramount control over the river, may grant such license if the State should refuse one. The adaptability of the lands for the purpose of a boom was, therefore, a proper element for consideration in estimating the value of the lands condemned. The contention on the part of the plaintiff in error is, that such adaptability should not be considered, assuming that this adaptability could never be made available by other persons. by reason of its supposed exclusive privileges; in other words. that by the grant of exclusive privileges to the company the owner is deprived of the value which the lands, by their adaptability for boom purposes, previously possessed, and therefore should not now receive any thing from the company on account of such adaptability upon a condemnation of the lands. We do not think that the owner, by the charter of the company, lost this element of value in his property.

The views we have expressed as to the justness of considering the peculiar fitness of the lands for particular purposes as an element in estimating their value find support in the several cases cited by counsel. Thus, In the Matter of Furman Street (17 Wend. 669), where a lot upon which the owner had his resi

dence was injured by cutting down an embankment in opening a street in the city of Brooklyn, the Supreme Court of New York said that neither the purpose to which the property was applied, nor the intention of the owner in relation to its future enjoyment, was a matter of much importance in determining the compensation to be made to him; but that the proper inquiry was, "What is the value of the property for the most advantageous uses to which it may be applied?" In Goodwin v. Cincinnati & Whitewater Canal Co. (18 Ohio St. 169), where a railroad company sought to appropriate the bed of a canal for its track, the Supreme Court of Ohio held that the rule of valuation was what the interest of the canal company was worth, not for canal purposes or for any other particular use, but generally for any and all uses for which it might be suitable. And in Young v. Harrison (17 Ga. 30), where land necessary for an abutment of a bridge was appropriated, the Supreme Court of Georgia held that its value was not to be restricted to its agricultural or productive capacities, but that inquiry might be made as to all purposes to which it could be applied, having reference to existing and prospective wants of the community. Its value as a bridge site was, therefore, allowed in the estimate of compensation to be awarded to the owner.

These views dispose of the principle upon which the several exceptions by the plaintiff in error to the rulings of the court below in giving and in refusing instructions to the jury were taken, and we do not deem it important, therefore, to comment upon them.

Judgment affirmed.

SCULL v. UNITED STATES.

1. The act entitled "An Act for the final adjustment of private land-claims in the States of Florida, Louisiana, and Missouri," approved June 22, 1860 (12 Stat. 85), provides for presenting all such claims in Florida and Louisiana to the registers and receivers of the several land-offices, within their respective districts, and in Missouri to the recorder of land-titles for the city of St. Louis, and for a report on the claims to the Commissioner of the General Land-Office, and through him to Congress. In all such cases Congress reserved the right to confirm or to reject the claim.

2. The eleventh section of the act authorizes the claimants in a defined and

limited class of cases to sue by petition in the District Court of the United States within whose jurisdiction the land is situate.

8. The title on which such a suit can be sustained must be one which had been perfected under the Spanish or the French government before the cession to the United States, and the lands separated from the mass of the public domain by actual survey, or which are susceptible of such separation by a description which will enable a surveyor to ascertain and identify them by the boundaries found in the grant, or in an order of survey or investiture of possession.

4. No person can bring suit under that act who by himself, or by those under whom he claims, has not been out of possession over twenty years.

5. The act thus intended to provide a suit in the nature of ejectment against the United States whether out of possession or in possession, and to remove the bar of the Statute of Limitations.

6. The claim under the grant in this case covers over seven million acres, and it has never been actually surveyed or located; nor do the claimants present any actual survey, or ask for one, to ascertain if it be practicable under the description in the grant made in 1793.

7. An inspection of the maps presented by them, copied from the public surveys extended over the region to which the grant refers, shows that the calls for the boundary of the grant are impossible calls; that the royal surveyor was not on the ground, and was mistaken as to the locality of the natural objects on which he relied for description; and that no surveyor can by those calls locate or identify the land.

8. The suit was not, therefore, authorized by said act of 1860.

APPEAL from the District Court of the United States for the Western District of Missouri.

This is an appeal from a decree dismissing, on demurrer, the bill of the complainants, who, with the exception of one, their alienee, claim to be the heirs-at-law of Captain Don Joseph Valliere, who died intestate in the city of New Orleans in the year 1799. The suit was brought under the act entitled "An Act for the final adjustment of private land-claims in the States of Florida, Louisiana, and Missouri, and for other purposes," approved June 22, 1860. 12 Stat. 85.

The claim in this case is founded on three instruments of writing, of which translations are given in the record.

1. An order of Baron de Carondelet, Spanish governor of Louisiana: :

"11th June, 1793, to Captain Don Joseph Valliere, in the District of Arkansas, a tract of land, situated on the White River, extending from the rivers Norte Grande and Cibolos to the source of the said White River, ten leagues in depth.

"BARON DE CARONDELET."

2. A certificate of survey by Charles Trudeau :

"DON CARLOS TRUDEAU, Royal and Private Surveyor of the Province of Louisiana.

"I certify having measured, in favor and in presence of Don Joseph Valliere, captain of the stationary regiment of Louisiana, a portion of land situated in the jurisdiction of Arkansas, on the north and south banks of Rio Blanco; bounded on the east, or on the inferior limit, by the Rio Norte Grande, the Rio Blanco, and the Rio Cibolos; on the west, or superior limit, by the fountainhead or origin of the most western branch of the said Rio Blanco and by vacant lands of his majesty; separated from said vacant lands by a line beginning at the said fountain-head of the most western branch of Rio Blanco, running southwest ten leagues in depth; on the north by the lands of his majesty, separated from these by a drawn line, beginning at the Rio Norte Grande, commencing at a point ten leagues distant in a direct line from its mouth or confluence with the Rio Blanco, running in a course nearly west until it meets the fountain-head or origin of the most western branch of the Rio Blanco, and on the south side by vacant lands of his majesty, separated from these by a line drawn apart, beginning at a point where ends the southwest limit, ten leagues from the fountain-head or origin of the most western branch of the Rio Blanco, running on a parallel line with said Rio Blanco descending, ten leagues in depth, until it meets Rio Cibolos, at a distance of ten leagues in a direct line from Rio Blanco. All of which is now fully demonstrated in the figurative plan which precedes, in which are shown the dimensions and courses of the boundaries, the trees and monuments serving as artificial and natural boundaries. The lines and limits have been made at the request of the grantee and in compliance with the order of the governorgeneral, Baron de Carondelet, of the of June of the present year. All of which I certify that it may be everywhere valid. I give these presents, together with the figurative plan which precedes, on the 24th of October, 1793.

"CARLOS TRUDEAU, Surveyor-General."

The figurative plan is in the form following: