thousands. Naturally, the search for "vacancies" was
lively.

But often -- very often -- the land they thus secured,
though legally "unappropriated," would be occupied

by happy and contentedsettlers, who had laboured for
years to build up their homes, only to discover that their

titles were worthless, and to receive peremptory notice
to quit. Thus came about the bitter and not unjustifiable

hatred felt by the toiling settlers toward the shrewd and
seldom merciful speculators who so often turned them

forth destitute and homeless from their fruitless labours.
The history of the state teems with their antagonism.

Mr. Land-shark seldom showed his face on "locations"
from which he should have to eject the unfortunate victims

of a monstrously tangled land system, but let his emis-
saxies do the work. There was lead in every cabin,

moulded into balls for him; many of his brothers had
enriched the grass with their blood. The fault of it all

lay far back.
When the state was young, she felt the need of attract-

ing newcomers, and of rewarding those pioneers already
within her borders. Year after year she issued land scrip

-- Headrights, Bounties, Veteran Donations, Confeder-
ates; and to railroads, irrigation companies, colonies,

and tillers of the soil galore. All required of the grantee
was that he or it should have the scrip properlysurveyed

upon the public domain by the county or district surveyor,
and the land thus appropriated became the property of

him or it, or his or its heirs and assigns, forever.
In those days -- and here is where the trouble began

- the state's domain was practically inexhaustible, and
the old surveyors, with princely" target="_blank" title="a.王候般的；高贵的">princely -- yea, even Western

American -- liberality, gave good measure and over-
flowing. Often the jovial man of metes and bounds

would dispensealtogether with the tripod and chain.
Mounted on a pony that could cover something near a

"vara" at a step, with a pocket compass to direct his
course, he would trot out a survey by counting the beat

of his pony's hoofs, mark his corners, and write out his
field notes with the complacency produced by an act of

duty well performed. Sometimes -- and who could
blame the surveyor? -- when the pony was "feeling his

oats," he might step a little higher and farther, and in
that case the beneficiary of the scrip might get a thousand

or two more acres in his survey than the scrip called for.
But look at the boundless leagues the state had to spare!

However, no one ever had to complain of the pony under-
stepping. Nearly every old survey in the state con-

tained an excess of land.
In later years, when the state became more populous,

and land values increased, this careless work entailed
incalculable trouble, endless litigation, a period of riotous

land-grabbing, and no little bloodshed. The land-
sharks voraciously attacked these excesses in the old

surveys, and filed upon such portions with new scrip as
unappropriated public domain. Wherever the identi-

fications of the old tracts were vague, and the corners
were not to be clearly established, the Land Office would

recognize the newer locations as valid, and issue title to
the locators. Here was the greatest hardship to be found.

These old surveys, taken from the pick of the land, were
already nearly all occupied by unsuspecting and peaceful

settlers, and thus their titles were demolished, and the
choice was placed before them either to buy their land

over at a double price or to vacate it, with their families
and personal belongings, immediately. Land locators

sprang up by hundreds. The country was held up and
searched for "vacancies" at the point of a compass.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of splendid
acres were wrested from their innocent purchasers and

holders. There began a vast hegira of evicted settlers
in tattered wagons; going nowhere, cursing injustice,

stunned, purposeless, homeless, hopeless. Their children
began to look up to them for bread, and cry.

It was in consequence of these conditions that Hamil-
ton and Avery had filed upon a strip of land about a mile

wide and three miles long, comprising about two thou-
sand acres, it being the excess over complement of the

Elias Denny three-league survey on Chiquito River, in
one of the middle-western counties. This two-thousand-

acre body of land was asserted by them to be vacant land,
and improperly considered a part of the Denny survey.

They based this assertion and their claim upon the land
upon the demonstrated facts that the beginning corner

of the Denny survey was plainly identified; that its field
notes called to run west 5,760 varas, and then called for

Chiquito River; thence it ran south, with the meanders
-- and so on -- and that the Chiquito River was, on the

ground, fully a mile farther west from the point reached
by course and distance. To sum up: there were two

thousand acres of vacant land between the Denny survey
proper and Chiquito River.

One sweltering day in July the Commissioner called
for the papers in connection with this new location.

They were brought, and heaped, a foot deep, upon his desk
-- field notes, statements, sketches, affidavits, connecting

lines-documents of every description that shrewdness
and money could call to the aid of Hamlin and Avery.

The firm was pressing the Commissioner to issue a
patent upon their location. They possesed inside infor-

mation concerning a new railroad that would probably
pass somewhere near this land.

The General Land Office was very still while the Com-
missioner was delving into the heart of the mass of evi-

dence. The pigeons could be heard on the roof of the
old, castle-like building, cooing and fretting. The clerks

were droning everywhere, scarcely pretending to earn
their salaries. Each little sound echoed hollow and loud

from the bare, stone-flagged floors, the plastered walls, and
the iron-joisted ceiling. The impalpable, perpetual lime-

stone dust that never settled, whitened a long streamer of
sunlight that pierced the tattered window-awning.

It seemed that Hamlin and Avery had builded well.
The Denny survey was carelessly made, even for a care-

less period. Its beginning corner was identical with
that of a well-defined old Spanish grant, but its other

calls were sinfully vague. The field notes contained no
other object that survived -- no tree, no natural object

save Chiquito River, and it was a mile wrong there.
According to precedent, the Office would be justified in

giving it its complement by course and distance, and
considering the remaindervacant instead of a mere excess.

The Actual Settler was besieging the office with wild
protests in re. Having the nose of a pointer and the eye

of a hawk for the land-shark, he had observed his myrmi-