DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR.

This department was established by an act of Congress, approved March 3, 1849. To its supervision and management are committed the following branches of the public service:

1st. The Public Lands.-Its head is the Commissioner of the General Land Office. The Land Bureau is charged with the survey, management, and sale of the public domain, the revision of Virginia military bounty-land claims, and the issuing of scrip in lieu thereof.

2nd. Pensions.-The Commissioner of this bureau is charged with the examination and adjudication of all claims arising under the various and numerous laws passed by Congress, granting bounty land or pensions for the military or naval service in the revolutionary and subsequent wars.

3d. The Indian Office has charge of all matters connected with the Indians. 4th. The Patent Office is charged with the performance of all "acts and things touching and respecting the granting and issuing of patents for new and useful discoveries, inventions, and improvements."

The Department of the Interior has, besides, the supervision of the accounts of the United States marshals and attorneys, and of the clerks of the United States Courts, and the management of the lead and other mines of the United States; the duty of taking and returning the censuses of the United States, and the management of the affairs of public institutions in the District of Columbia.

CHIEF OFFICERS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR.
[Corrected at the Department, October, 1868.]

The Land Bureau was first established in 1812 as an office in the Treasury Department, but was transferred to the Department of the Interior in 1859. The public Lands that have belonged, and now belong, to the General Government are situated as follows: 1st.-Within the limits of the United States, as defined by the treaty of 1783, and which are embraced by the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, all formed out of the Northwestern Territory as conveyed with certain reservations to the United States by New York, in 1781, by Virginia, in 1784, by Massachusetts, in 1785, and by Connecticut, in 1786; also the lands within the boundaries of the States of Mississippi and Alabama north of the 31° North Latitude, as conveyed to the United States by Georgia in 1802. 2d. Within the Territories of Orleans and Louisiana, as acquired from France, by the treaty of 1803, including the portion of the states of Alabama and Mississippi south of 31°; the whole of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, and the Territories of Colorado, Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Washington. 3d.-Within the state of Florida, as obtained from Spain by the treaty of 1819. 4th.---In New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and California, as acquired from Mexico by the treaty of 1848. 5th.-The "Gadsden Purchase" 23,161,000 acres south of the Gila River from Mexico, in 1854. 6th.-The Russian purchase of Northwestern America or Alaska, in 1867.

The area of the public lands, exclusive of the Russian purchase is 1,465,468,800 acres. The extent of that purchase is estimated at 577,390 square miles, or 369,529,600 acres, making a total of 1,834,998,400 acres.

The aggregate of public lands which have been surveyed is 485,311,778 acres, leaving a residue of 1,349,686,622 acres yet unsurveyed.

The public land or rectangular system of survey and transfer of landed property was adopted May 20, 1785; it has been modified and enlarged by subsequent laws until it has reached proportions and completeness of scientific structure which make it pre-eminently valuable and in some respects unrivaled. Under that system base lines are first established, corresponding with latitude. These are then intersected at right angles by principal meridians in coincidence with longitude. From such bases, townships of six miles square are run out and established with regular series of numbers counting north and south from these bases, while the ranges are counted by like series of numbers as running east and west of the meridians.

The six mile square townships are divided into sections of one mile square

or 640 acres, again into half sections of 320, quarters of 160, half quarters of SO, and quarter quarters or sixteenths of 40 acres.

Since the adoption of the system, covering a period of 82 years, twenty principal bases, and twenty-three principal meridians have been established, and it has been initiated, in all the land States and Territories of the Union, in several of which it has completed the work of surveying. In its progress the whole of the surveys everywhere from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are referable for the identification of any division or subdivision, great or small, to the initial points or intersections of the surveyed base lines with the principal meridians.

The first principal meridian divides the states of Ohio and Indiana; the second is a controlling line in the surveys of Indiana, and in part in Illinois; the third also governing to a certain extent the latter state; the fourth traverses the western part of Illinois, extending through Wisconsin and Minnesota to our northern international boundary; the fifth passing through Arkansas, Missouri and Iowa, with a common base line running due west from the St. Francis river in Arkansas, governs the surveys in these states, also in part of Minnesota west of the Mississippi, and in Dakota west of the Missouri; then there is the sixth principal meridian, the initial point of intersection being coincident with the 40th parallel and 92° 13′ west longitude from Greenwich. Upon this line depend the surveys in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and that part of Dakota west of the Missouri.

In addition to these 6 principal meridians and bases, 17 subordinate meridians and corresponding bases have been established. These meridians and bases with their auxiliary standard parallels and guide meridians have required perambulations of surveyors in the field amounting to 1,476,673 lineal miles.

Upon this system thus established over the greater portion of the country rests the whole work of dividing and subdividing the national territory, and of making out the same into different sizes for farms and settlements.

The service has been steadily advancing from the foundation of the government, and in its progress has completed the extension of the lines of survey over the whole surface of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, (the Upper and Lower Peninsula), Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and nearly so in Louisiana and Florida.

Congress by proclamation in 1785, and by acts of 1804 and 1807, protected the public domain from occupation or settlement unauthorized by law, and by the general pre-emption laws of 1830, 1832, 1834, 1841, and 1843, secured to actual settlers pre-emption rights to a certain portion of the public lands. These laws concede the actual settler 160 acres, but require of him the erection of a dwelling with actual inhabitation and cultivation. Congress by subsequent enactments has legislated still further in aid of actual settlers, by holding out encouragement to take possession of the national soil and confirming occupants in their improvements on lands afterwards withdrawn by grants to railroads and for educational purposes. It has also by acts of 1844, 1864, 1865, and 1867, encouraged the growth of towns and cities.

The law of pre-emption extends the privilege to three classes, each having the qualification of citizenship or having filed a declaration to that end. 1. "Every person being the head of a family."

2. "A widow."

3. “A single man over the age of twenty-one years."

The Homestead act of May 20, 1862 and supplements hold out still further inducements to settlements of public lands.

By this act any person who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of 21 years, or has performed service in the army or navy, and is a citizen of the United States, or shall have filed his declaration of intention to become such, and has never borne arms against the Government of the United States or given aid and comfort to its enemies, shall from and after the 1st of January, 1863, be entitled to enter a quarter section (160 acres) of unappropriated public land upon which he or she may have already filed a pre-emption claim or which is subject to pre-emption at $1.25 per acre; or 80 acres of unappropriated land at $2.50 per acre. In order to make his or her title good to such lands, however, such person must make affidavit that such application is made for his or her exclusive use and benefit, and that said entry is made for the purpose of actual settlement and cultivation, and not, either directly or indirectly for the use or benefit of any other person or persons whomsoever; and upon filing the affidavit, and paying the sum of $10 to the register or receiver, such person shall be allowed to enter the land specified; but no certificate or patent is issued for the land until five years from the date of such entry, and the land must during that time be improved and not alienated (it cannot be taken for debt). At any time within two years after the expiration of said five years, the person making the entry, or, in case of his or her death, his widow or heirs, may on proof by two witnesses that he or she has cultivated or improved said land, has not alienated any part of it, and has borne true allegiance to the United States, be entitled to a patent if at that time a citizen of the United States. In case of the abandonment of the lands by the person making the entry for a period of more than six months at one time, they revert to the United States.

Bounty Land warrants have been issued to the soldiers of the war of the revolution and to those who have served in subsequent wars under acts of 1847, 1850, 1852, and 1855, which from the commencement of operations under these acts to June 30, 1867 have amounted as follows:

Warrants issued, 542,248; number of acres embraced thereby, 59,631,610; number of warrants located, 488,336, embracing 54,028,390 acres. The whole quantity conceded for military and naval services from 1776 to 1855, was 71,714,555 acres.

The Continental Congress, by the ordinance of May 20, 1785, respecting the territory northwest of the Ohio, prepared the way for the advance of settlements and education as contemporaneous interests. It determined that in every six miles square there should be established the school system, to be supported from a fund derived from the grant of section sixteen, of 640 acres, in every township; and at a later period for indemnity where the section

in place was not available; thus conceding one thirty-sixth part of the public lands in the interests of public education.

It was afterwards determined in the new land states and territories, the localities of which were distant from the political centre or centres of settlements, to increase the school concessions to two sections or 1,280 acres in each township, so that the school house, high school, and seminary, could be so advantageously placed in the township as to avoid inconvenience in daily attendance.

Besides the school allotment, provision has been made on a liberal scale for seminaries of learning and colleges, so that the land fund may be adequate to the support of institutions in which are taught all the higher branches of a liberal education.

To each organized Territory the sections in place and townships for seminaries have been reserved, and by the act of admission as a state into the Union, the reservation has been carried into a grant and confirmed. If there be added to the quantity already conceded to the public land states for school purposes, the area that will pass according to the principles of existing legislation to the organized territories when they shall become states, it will be found that the aggregate will reach 70,559,112 acres. Besides there have been granted for seminaries of learning 1,244,160 acres, making an aggregate thus conceded in the cause of learning of 71,803,272 acres, much of it of great value, and from which, if properly invested, ample funds may be derived for the continual support of the great object contemplated by the munificent grant.

For the support of colleges for education in agriculture, mechanics, and in the mineral interests, the act of July 2, 1862, and its supplements, made provisions not only for the states holding public domain, but for others which have none, giving to the former the right to select within their limits, and to the latter scrip redeemable in land; the amount conceded being 30,000 acres for each senator and member of the House of Representatives, which when made applicable to all the states, will include an area of 9,600,000 acres.

Most of the older states have received the allotment in scrip which has been disposed of, and the avails appropriated to the object designed; in the newer or land states, selections have been made by the state authorities for the same purpose.

By various acts of Congress from 1849 to 1860, large quantities of swamp and overflowed lands have been granted to several states. The first swamp land grant was made to Louisiana in 1849 to aid that state in constructing levees and drains along the Mississippi and other rivers to prevent the overflow of the bottom lands. In 1850 the grant was made general, so as to apply to other states in which such swamp and overflowed lands were situated.

At the close of the fiscal year June 30, 1867, state selections had been made under the internal improvement grant of September 4, 1841, as follows: