: THE EARLY GOVERNMENT RIVER.* LAND SURVEY IN THE MISSISSIPPI BY HON, THOMAS SIMPSON. SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT SURVEYS. Well founded tradition gives to George Washington, the first President of the Republic, the credit of devising the plan for the survey of lands which for nearly a century has been applied to the survey of the public domain of the United States. This plan or system of surveys has as its unit the square acre; then the section, a mile square, 640 square acres; then the township, six miles square, containing 36 square sections. The townships lying between two consecutive meridians six miles apart constitute a range, and the ranges are numbered from principal meridians both east and west. In each range the townships are numbered both north and south from the principal east and west base line. For obvious reasons the author of this plan or system of land surveys did not have the occasion for putting the same into practical operation, since each of the thirteen colonies had adopted systems of surveys of the lands granted them by Great Britain, which could not readily be conformed to this system. It was inaugurated and carried out in the survey of lands which have come into the possession of the general government after the adoption of the constitution, known generally as Government Lands, sometimes as Public Lands, or as the General Domain. *Read at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council, December 11, 1899. This plan of surveys was to some extent inaugurated in 1803 by Col. Jared Mansfield, then surveyor general of the Northwest Territory; and was subsequently enacted as a law, in 1804, upon the recommendation of President Jefferson. The more general feature of this plan of surveys of the public domain, thus devised and covered by the enactment of Congress, provides for the establishment of principal meridians, extended north and south from an east and west base line. These are numbered from the east to the west, as the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth principal meridians; and the lands in Minnesota lying west of the Mississippi river are all described as west of the fifth principal meridian. These principal meridians were established in the beginning, in the successive "land districts," over each of which was appointed a surveyor general, who controlled the surveys in his district, subject to such rules, regulations, and directions, as should be given him from time to time by the commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington. Hence the first principal meridian was the most easterly, in the first surveyor general's land district designated by the general government. It is not, perhaps, strictly germane to the special subject to be presented in this paper, that I should enter into a more particular description of these principal meridians, and the points upon the east and west base lines from which they were respectively run and established. I have in this paper to deal mainly with the government survey of public lands in Minnesota lying west of the Mississippi river, which, as I have already stated, were and are described as west of the fifth principal meridian. That a clearer understanding of these surveys may be given, it should be stated that the east and west base line from which the townships in Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota west of the river, are numbered, passes nearly through the center of the State of Arkansas. The townships in the first tier on the north side of that line are designated as numbered one north, and each township in the first tier south of that line is designated and described as township number one south,-counting north and south from this base line. This will answer and explain the oft repeated inquiry, what this word north means in describing townships in Minnesota. When, in describing land, after giving the number of the section, |