and field notes by the deputy mineral surveyor, the Surveyor General, having caused the trigonometrical measurement as hereinbefore provided to be made between the nearest initial district mineral monument and the initial monument of the mining claim, shall apply said mineral claim survey to his district map and, provided said claim or any part thereof does not overlap any previously applied plat and is otherwise correct, he shall approve said survey and within ten days thereafter shall delineate it upon said district map and make two full copies of said plat and field notes, forwarding one to the Commissioner of the General Land Office and the other to the Register of the proper land office. Said district map shall be open to examination by the public. Copies of all approved surveys shall be furnished to interested parties on payment of costs as fixed by the Commissioner of the General Land Office. said Surveyor General applies any duly returned plat to said district. maps, and said plat is found to conflict with or overlap a previously approved survey said Surveyor General shall withhold approval thereof, and no legal effect shall attach to the same by reason of its having been made in the field nor by reason of any approval thereof if the same should inadvertently or accidentally be approved in conflict with prior approval.

If the

SEC. 180. It shall be the duty of each Surveyor General within whose surveying district any mineral surveys have been or shall be made, and within thirty days after expiration of the ten days above mentioned, to furnish, free of cost, to each district land office and to the recorder of each county certified copies of such of said connecting maps as may embrace lands within the limits of said land district or within said counties, respectively; and copies shall also be furnished to deputy mineral surveyors at the discretion of the said Surveyor General.

SEC. 181. Within thirty days after approval of any subsequent survey it shall be the duty of each Surveyor General to furnish to each district land office and to the several county recorders a certified copy of such of said subsequent surveys as may fall within said land district and counties, respectively, and the district land offices shall forthwith cause said survey to be immediately delineated in its proper position upon the connecting maps theretofore furnished them.

SEC. 182. Each of said connecting maps shall show in a marginal table the date of approval of the several surveys delineated thereon, and said marginal table shall be regularly continued as subsequent surveys are added to said connecting maps. Each copy hereinbefore provided. for shall also exhibit the exact date of such approval or approvals.

SEC. 183. In the event that proof of bona fide development and payment of purchase money shall not be made or tendered within the year heretofore prescribed, it shall be the duty of the Register of the proper land office to notify the Commissioner of the General Land Office, who shall forthwith cause said survey to be cancelled in all the offices under his control, and shall cause notice thereof to be sent to the recorder of the county wherein the cancelled survey was situate. After said cancellation no right or claim of any character shall survive in any party by reason of said survey, and the land embraced therein shall be subject to the claim of any intervening or subsequent party, as if no such survey had ever been made or applied for.

SEC. 184. Copies of said connecting maps shall also be furnished to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, who shall cause the same to be continuously perfected, as herein before prescribed as to other of fices.

SEC. 185 If any Surveyor General, wilfully or negligently omits to H. Ex. 46- -VI

promptly perform the duties prescribed in this chapter, it shall be considered sufficient cause for his dismissal from office.

SEC. 186. If at any time after application for survey, and prior to application for patent, it shall be proved, after personal notice to the mineral claimant, to the satisfaction of the Register of the proper land district, that said claimant has left his surveyed claim with the intention of not complying with the provisions of this chapter, the right of said claimant shall cease and determine, after notice in the usual form to the claimant of said decision by the district Register; and in the absence of appeal to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, the latter officer shall cause the cancellation of the said survey, as herein before provided.

SEC. 187. The Surveyors General of the United States may appoint in their respective districts as many competent surveyors, furnishing satisfactory evidence of professional capacity, and giving bond in the penal sum of $10,000, as shall apply for appointment to survey mineral claims. The expense of surveying claims shall be paid by the applicants, and they shall be at liberty. to obtain the same at the most reasonable rates; and they shall also be at liberty to employ any United States deputy surveyor to make the survey.

SEC. 188. The Commissioner of the General Land Office shall also have power to establish the maximum of charges for surveying, and any deputy surveyor proved to have exceeded this maximum shall forfeit his commission, and shall not thereafter be eligible for appointment.

SEC. 189. All affidavits required to be made under this chapter may be verified before any judge or clerk of a court of record, or before any officer authorized to administer oaths, whose official capacity shall be properly verified; and all testimony and proofs may be taken before any such officer, and when duly certified by the officer taking the same shall have the same force and effect as if taken before the Register of the land office. In cases of contest as to the mineral or agricultural character of the land, the testimony and proofs may be taken as herein provided, on personal notice of at least ten days to the opposing party, or if such party cannot be found, then by the publication of at least once a week for thirty days in a newspaper to be designated by the Register of the land office as published nearest to the location of such land, and the Register shall require proof that such notice has been given.

SEC. 190. All rights which have attached to mining claims under previous acts of Congress shall not be affected by the operations of this chapter: Provided, That where such claims have not been or shall not within one year thereafter be consummated by the required payment of purchase money, such unconsummated claims shall lapse, and the land embraced therein shall thereafter be subject only to the operations of this chapter.

SEC. 191. Where land is used or occupied by the proprietor of a mining claim for mining or mill purposes, such land may be embraced and included in an application for a patent for such mining claim, and the same may be patented therewith, subject to the same preliminary requirements as to survey and notice as are applicable to mineral claims; but no location hereafter made of such mill-site shall exceed five acres, and the same must be paid for at the same rate as fixed by this chapter for the superficies of the mineral claim. The owner of reduction works, not owning a mine in connection therewith, may also receive a patent for his mill-site as provided in this section.

SEC. 192. As a condition of sale, in the absence of necessary legisla

tion 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 this condition shall be fully expressed in the patent.

SEC. 193. Whenever, by priority of possession, rights to the use of water for mining, agricultural, manufacturing, 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 herein specified is acknowledged and confirmed; but whenever any person, in the construction of any ditch or canal, injures or damages 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. 194. All patents granted, or pre-emption or homesteads allowed, shall be subject to any vested and accrued water-rights, or rights to ditches and reservoirs used in connection with such water-rights, as may have been acquired under or recognized by the preceding section.

SEC. 195. Wherever, upon the lands heretofore improperly designated as mineral lands, which have been excluded from survey or 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, lead, copper, coal, iron, or other valuable deposit discovered, and which are properly agricultural lands, the settlers or owners of such homesteads shall have a right to avail themselves of the provisions of chapter sixth of this title, relating to homesteads.

SEC. 196. Upon the survey of the lands described in the preceding section, the Secretary of the Interior may designate and set apart such portions of the same as are clearly agricultural lands, which lands shall thereafter be subject to homestead and sale as other public lands, and be subject to all the laws and regulations applicable to the same.

SEC. 197. The President is 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 chapter.

SEC. 198. The provisions of the preceding sections of this chapter shall not apply to the mineral lands situated in the States of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, which are declared free and open to exploration and purchase, according to legal subdivisions, in like manner as before the tenth day of May, eighteen hundred and seventy-two. And any bona fide entries of such lands within the States named, since the tenth day of May, eighteen hundred and seventy-two, may be patented without reference to any of the foregoing provisions of this chapter. Such lands shall be offered for public sale in the same manner, at the same minimum price, and under the same rights of pre-emption as other public lands.

SEC. 199. No act passed by Congress, granting lands to States or corporations to aid in the construction of roads or for other purposes, or to extend the time of such grants, shall be so construed as to embrace mineral lands, which in all cases are reserved exclusively to the United States, unless otherwise specially provided in the act or acts making the grant.

SEC. 200. Section 2323 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, relating to tunnel rights, is hereby repealed.

SEC. 201. Every person above the age of twenty-one years, who is a citizen of the United States, or who has declared his intention to be. come such, or any association of persons severally qualified as above, shall, upon application to the Register of the proper land office, have the right to enter, by legal subdivisions in a compact body, any quantity of vacant public lands of the United States containing coal and iron valuable for domestic or commercial purposes, not exceeding three hundred and twenty acres, and not otherwise appropriated or reserved by competent authority, upon payment to the Register of not less than ten dollars per acre for such lands.

SEC. 202. Where any such person or association of persons shall have opened or improved any coal or iron mine upon unsurveyed public lands, and shall be in actual possession of the same, such person or association shall be entitled after survey to a preference right of entry of such lands: Provided, That said entry shall be effected within sixty days after publication of notice of return of the township plat to the district land office.

SEC. 203. The two preceding sections shall be held to authorize only one entry by the same person or association of persons; and no association of persons, any member of which shall have taken the benefit of such sections either as an individual or as a member of any other association, shall hold or enter any other lands under the provisions thereof; and no member of any association which shall have taken the benefit of such sections shall enter or hold any other lands under their provisions. SEC. 204. In case of conflicting claims for the purchase of coal or iron lands, where the right of either party was initiated when the lands were unsurveyed, priority of possession and improvement, followed by continuous and bona fide occupation, shall determine the preference right to purchase; but joint purchase shall be allowable on consent of the parties, or when, in the judgment of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, the conflict was created without notice of any prior claim.

SEC. 205. Nothing in the four preceding sections shall be construed to destroy or impair any rights which may have attached prior to the passage of this act, or to authorize the sale of lands valuable for mines of gold, silver, or copper. The Commissioner of the General Land Office is authorized to issue all needful rules and regulations for carrying into effect the provisions of this and the four preceding sections.

CHAPTER XIII.

PRIVATE LAND CLAIMS.

SEC. 206. It shall and may be lawful for any person or persons, or their legal representatives, claiming lands within the limits of the territory derived by the United States from the Republic of Mexico and now embraced within the Territories of New Mexico, Wyoming, Arizona, or Utah, or within the States of Nevada or Colorado, by virtue of such lawful Spanish or Mexican grant, concession, warrant, or survey as the United States are bound to recognize by virtue of the treaties of cession of said country by Mexico to the United States, which, at the date of the passage of this act, have not been confirmed by act of Congress, or otherwise decided upon by lawful authority, in every such case to present a petition, in writing, to the judge of the district court of the United States in a State or Territory for the judicial district in which

such lands may be situate, setting forth fully the nature of their claims to the lands, and particularly stating the date and form of the grant, concession, warrant, or order of survey under which they claim, by whom made, the name or names of any person or persons in possession of or claiming the same, or any part thereof, otherwise than by the lease or permission of the petitioner; and, also, the quantity of land claimed and the boundaries thereof, where situate, with a map showing the same as near as may be; and whether the said claim has heretofore been confirmed, considered, or acted upon by Congress, or the authorities of the United States, or been heretofore submitted to any authorities constituted by law for the adjustment of land titles within the limits of the said territory so acquired, and by them reported on unfavorably or recommended for confirmation, or authorized to be surveyed or not; and praying in such petition that the validity of such title or claim may be inquired into and decided. And the said courts respectively are hereby authorized and required to take and exercise jurisdiction of all cases or claims presented by petition in conformity with the provisions of this act, and to hear and determine the same, as hereinafter provided, on the petition and proofs in case no answer or answers be filed after due notice, or on the petition and the answer or answers of any person or persons interested in preventing any claim from being established, and the answer of the district attorney, where he may have filed an answer, and such testimony and proofs as may be taken; and a copy of such petition, with a citation to any adverse possessor or claimant, shall, immediately after the filing of the same, be served on such possessor or claimant in the ordinary legal manner of serving such process in the proper State or Territory, and in like manner on the district attorney of the United States; and it shall be the duty of the United States attorney for the proper district, as also any adverse possessor or claimant, after service of petition and citation, as herein before provided, within thirty days, unless further time shall, for good cause shown, be granted by the judge or court to whom said petition is presented, to enter an appearance, and plead, answer, or demur to said petition; and in default of such plea, answer, or demurrer being made within said thirty days, or within the further time which may have been granted as aforesaid, the court shall proceed to hear the cause on the petition and proofs, and render a final decree according to the provisions of this act; and in no case shall a decree be entered otherwise than upon full legal proof and hearing; and in every case the court shall require the petition to be sustained by satisfactory proofs, whether an answer or plea shall have been filed or not.

SEC. 207. All proceedings subsequent to the filing of said petition shall be conducted as near as may be according to the rules of the courts of equity in the proper Territory or court of the United States in the States, except that the answer of the attorney of the United States shall not be required to be verified by his oath, and no continuance shall be granted unless for good cause shown; and the said courts shall have fail power and authority to hear and determine all questions arising in said case relative to the title of the claimants, the extent, locality, and boundaries of said claim, or other matters connected therewith, fit and proper to be heard and determined, and by a final decree to settle and determine the question of the validity of the title and the boundaries of the grant or claim presented for adjudication, according to the law of nations, the stipulations of the treaty concluded between the United States and the Republic of Mexico, at the city of Guadalupe Hidalgo, on the second day of February, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight