issued by the governor to the Surveyor-General Don Carlos Trudeau, to cause the land prayed for to be surveyed and put into possession of the petitioner. This duty was performed by the deputy-surveyor of the district, and the survey being approved and returned, accompanied by a plat, the governor thereupon granted his patent; the usual fees being paid in all the stages of the process by the grantee.

The first warrant or order of survey was issued on the 20th of April, 1784, by Don Estevan Miro, who continued to officiate as governor, and to make grants until the 29th of August, 1791. He was succeeded by Francis Louis Hector El Baron de Carondelet, by whom grants were made from the 8th of March, 1792, to the 1st of September, 1795. All the patents bear the private seal with the coat of arms of the governor, and are countersigned by the secretary Andrez Lopes Armesto. (See Plate II.)

It has been objected that the extension of the limits of West Florida, by the British government, to the Yazoo Kiver, was an infringement of colonial charters or grants previously made, and that the titles to land made in that portion of the State were necessarily void. Spain, also, in wresting by conquest from Great Britain the same territory, not truly belonging to her, acquired no title thereto to the prejudice of the previous and rightful holders; the Spanish grants, therefore, to the same extent, were equally invalid.

This position was subsequently affirmed by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and was borne out and admitted, virtually, in the treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain, fixing the southern boundary of the independent colonies along the thirty-first degree of north latitude; and by the

lacsiruilies of signatures and seals of tlie Spanish GOVERNORS o' LOUISIANA

treaty of San Lorenzo, of the 27th of October, 1795, by which Spain finally yielded possession of this territory, to the United States.

The American government, however, with a paternal regard for the inhabitants occupying these lands, made provision for the confirmation, not only of the Spanish titles, but those of Great Britain, so far as they had been recognized by the former government, and were duly occupied.

The incomplete titles, or Spanish orders of survey, if occupied and cultivated at the date of the treaty, were also to be confirmed under the character of donations from the United States, when in fact the whole series, both of British or Spanish grants, of whatever grade, might so be regarded, being equally void or illegal, except so far as they were recognized by the act of Congress providing for their adjudication.

Large portions of the country being held under Spanish grants, covering lands claimed by non-resident British grantees, much uneasiness was exhibited by the holders, to whom they had been confirmed by the American government, when the British claimants manifested a disposition to test the validity of their rights, through agents, sent over from England for that purpose. Suits were instituted to eject the holders under the Spanish grants, and the anxiety of the people became so great that Congress was petitioned to compromise and quiet those claims. A report of a committee of the House of Representatives, made as late as 1814, nearly ten years after the claims had been confirmed by the Board of Commissioners, adverse to the prayer of the petitioners, which seemed to accord superior validity to the British grants, from their anterior date, was not calculated to allay the anxiety of the occupants.

The decision of the District Court of the United States, in the suit instituted by the heirs of Harcourt, and which was fully affirmed by the Supreme Court, settled the question finally, and the British grants are now no more regarded than that of Sir Kobert Heath.

This decision of the Supreme Court was subsequently ably controverted by Chief Justice C. P. Smith, of the High Court of this State, when engaged, some years since, as counsel for the representatives of Campbell, who claimed a tract of land, embracing the town of Rodney, under a British patent dated 11th July, 1772. It was maintained by Judge Smith, in an elaborate argument, sustained by indisputable authority, "That the British government had the right, and had exercised it repeatedly, of dismembering or altering the limits or boundaries of its royal colonies; that the crown retained the right of property in the soil; that the extension of the limits of West Florida, from the thirty-first degree of north latitude to a line drawn due east from the mouth of the Yazoo, was a right legitimately exercised, and the grants made within those limits, by the Governor of West Florida, were consequently valid."

The rejection of the British claims should have rested, therefore, solely on their non-recognition by the Spanish and American governments, and a failure of the fulfilment of the conditions of those grants, and not upon want of jurisdiction in the British government.

So far, all grants of land were confined to districts to which the Indian title had been extinguished previous to the accession of the country to the United States.

In 1777, the British government entered into a treaty with the Indians at Mobile, by which the boundaries of the lands claimed by the French, on the sea-coast and in the Natchez District, were defined; and in the year 1779,