PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP OF MINING CLAIMANTS.

93. The proof necessary to establish the citizenship of applicants for mining patents, whether under the present or past enactments, it will be seen by reference to the sev enth section of the act under consideration, may consist, in the case of an individual claimant, of his own affidavit of the fact; in the case of an association of persons not incorporated, of the affidavit of their authorized agent, made on his own knowledge or upon information and belief, that the several members of such association are citizens; and in the case of an incorporated company, organized under the laws of the United States, or the laws of any State or Territory of the United States, by the filing of a certified copy of their charter or certificate of incorporation.

94. These affidavits of citizenship may be taken before the register or receiver, or any other officer anthorized to administer oaths within the district.

95. Copies of the previous mining statutes of Congress, dated respectively July 26, 1866, and July 9, 1870, are hereto attached, sections one, two, three, four, and six of the former being expressly repealed by the ninth section of the act of May 10, 1872, aforesaid, which, in its sixteenth section, also repeals all acts and parts of acts inconsistent with its provisions.

96. The foregoing will be followed in due time by such further instructions as actual experience in the administration of the statute may render necessary.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

WILLIS DRUMMOND,

Commissioner.

TO REGISTERS and RECEIVERS, and SURVEYORS GENERAL.

AN ACT granting the right of way to ditch and canal owners over the public lands, and for other

purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the mineral lands of the public domain, both surveyed and unsurveyed, are hereby declared to be free and open to exploration and occupation by all citizens of the United States, and those who have declared their intention to become citizens, subject to such regulations as may be prescribed by law, and subject also to the local customs or rules of miners in the several mining districts, so far as the same may not be in conflict with the laws of the United States. [Repealed.]

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That whenever any person, or association of persons, claim a vein or lode of quartz, or other rock in place, bearing gold, silver, cinnabar, or copper, having previously occupied and improved the same according to the local customs or rules of miners in the district where the same is situated, and having expended, in actual labor and improvements thereon, an amount of not less than one thousand dollars, and in regard to whose possession there is no controversy or opposing claim, it shall and may be lawful for said claimant, or association of claimants, to file in the local land office a diagram of the same so extended laterally or otherwise as to conform to the local laws, customs, and rules of miners, and to enter such tract and receive a patent therefor, granting such mine, together with the right to follow such vein or lode with its dips, angles, and variations to any depth, although it may enter the land adjoining, which land adjoining shall be sold subject to this condition. [Repealed.] SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That upon the filing of the diagram as provided in the second section of this act, and posting the same in a conspicuous place on the claim, together with a notice of intention to apply for a patent, the register of the land office shall publish a notice of the same in a newspaper published nearest to the location of said claim, and shall also post such notice in his office for the period of ninety days, and after the expiration of said period, if no adverse claim shall have been filed, it shall be the duty of the surveyor general, upon application of the party, to survey the premises and make a plat thereof, indorsed with his approval, desiguating the number and description of the location, the value of the labor and improvements, and the character of the vein exposed; and, upon the payment to the proper officer of five dollars per acre, together with the cost of such survey, plat, and notice, and giving satisfactory evidence that said diagram and notice have been posted on the claim during said period of ninety days, the register of the land office shall transmit to the General Land Office said plat, survey, and description, and a patent shall issue for the same thereupon. But said plat, survey, or description shall in no case cover more than one vein or lode, and no patent shall issue for more than one vein or lode, which shall be expressed in the patent issued. [Repealed.]

SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That when such location and entry of a mine shall be upon unsurveyed lands, it shall and may be lawful, after the extension thereto of the public surveys, to adjust the surveys to the limits of the premises according to the location and possession and plat aforesaid; and the surveyor general may, in ex

tending the surveys, vary the same from a rectangular form to suit the circumstances of the country and the local rules, laws, and customs of miners: Prorided, That no location hereafter made shall exceed two hundred feet in length along the vein for each locator, with an additional claim for discovery to the discoverer of the lode, with the right to follow such vein to any depth with all its dips, variations, and angles, together with a reasonable quantity of surface for the convenient working of the same, as fixed by local rules: And provided further, That no person may make more than one location on the same lode, and not more than three thousand feet shall be taken in any one claim by any association of persons. [Repealed.]

SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That as a further condition of sale, in the absence of necessary legislation 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 those conditions shall be fully expressed in the patent.

SEC. 6. And be it further enacted, That whenever any adverse claimants to any mine, located and claimed as aforesaid, shall appear before the approval of the survey, as provided in the third section of this act, all proceedings shall be stayed until final settlement and adjudication, in the courts of competent jurisdiction, of the rights of possession to such claim, when a patent may issue as in other cases. [Repealed.]

SEC. 7. And be it further enacted, That the President of United States be, and is hereby, 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 act.

SEC. 8. And be it further enacted, That the right of way for the construction of highways over public lands, not reserved for public uses, is hereby granted.

SEC. 9. And be it further enacted, That 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 cauals for the purposes aforesaid is hereby acknowledged and confirmed: Provided, however, That whenever, after the passage of this act, any person or persons shall, in the construction of any ditch or canal, injure or damage 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.

SFC. 10. And be it further enacted, That wherever, prior to the passage of this act, upon the lands heretofore designated as mineral lands, which have been excluded from survey and 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, or copper discovered, and which are properly agricultural lands, the said settlers or owners of such homesteads shall have a right of pre-emption thereto, and shall be entitled to purchase the same at the price of one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, and in quantity not to exceed one hundred and sixty acres; or said parties may avail themselves of the provisions of the act of Congress approved May twenty, eighteen hundred and sixty-two, entitled "An act to secure homesteads to actual settlers on the public domain," and acts amendatory thereof.

SEC. 11. And be it further enacted, That upon the survey of the lands aforesaid, the Secretary of the Interior may designate and set apart such portions of the said lands as are clearly agricultural lands, which lands shall thereafter be subject to pre-emption and sale as other public lands of the United States, and subject to all the laws and regulations applicable to the same.

Approved July 26, 1866.

AN ACT to amend "An act granting the right of way to ditch and canal owners over the public lands, and for other purposes."

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the act granting the right of way to ditch and canal owners over the public lands, and for other purposes, approved July twenty-six, eighteen hundred and sixty-six, be, and the same is hereby, amended by adding thereto the following additional sections, numbered twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen, respectively, which shall hereafter constitute and form a part of the aforesaid

act:

SEC. 12. And be it further enacted, That claims, usually called "placers," including all forms of deposit, excepting veins of quartz, or other rock in place, shall be subject to entry and patent under this act, under like circumstances and conditions, and upon similar proceedings, as are provided for vein or lode claims: Provided, That where the

lands have been previously surveyed by the United States, the entry in its exterior limits shall conform to the legal subdivisions of the public lands, no further survey or plat in such case being required, and the lands may be paid for at the rate of two dollars and fifty cents per acre: Provided further, That legal subdivisions of forty acres may be subdivided into ten-acre tracts; and that two or more persons, or associations of persons, having contiguous claims of any size, although such claims may be less than ten acres each, may make joint entry thereof: And provided further, That no location of a placer claim, hereafter made, shall exceed one hundred and sixty acres for any one person or association of persons, which location shall conform to the United States surveys; and nothing in this section contained shall defeat or impair any bona fide pre-emption or homestead claim upon agricultural lands, or authorize the sale of the improvements of any bona fide settler to any purchaser.

SEC. 13. And be it further enacted, That where said person or association, they and their grantors, shall have held and worked their claims for a period equal to the time prescribed by the statute of limitations for mining claims of the State or Territory where the same may be situated, evidence of such possession and working of the claims for such period shall be sufficient to establish a right to a patent thereto under this act, in the absence of any adverse claim: Provided, however, That nothing in this act shall be deemed to impair any lien which may have attached in any way whatever to any mining claim or property thereto attached prior to the issuance of a patent.

SEC. 14. And be it further enacted, That all ex parte affidavits required to be made under this act, or the act of which it is amendatory, may be verified before any officer authorized to administer oaths within the land district where the claims may be situated. SEC. 15. And be it further enacted, That registers and receivers shall receive the same fees for services under this act as are provided by law for like services under other acts of Congress; and that effect shall be given to the foregoing act according to such regulations as may be prescribed by the Commissioner of the General Land Office.

SEC. 16. And be it further enacted, That so much of the act of March third, eighteen hundred and fifty-three, entitled "An act to provide for the survey of the public lands in California, the granting of pre-emption rights, and for other purposes," as provides that none other than township lines shall be surveyed where the lands are mineral, is hereby repealed. And the public surveys are hereby extended over all such lands: Provided, That all subdividing of surveyed lands into lots less than one hundred and sixty acres may be done by county and local surveyors at the expense of the claimants: And provided further, That nothing herein contained shall require the survey of waste or useless lands.

SEC. 17. And be it further enacted, That none of the rights conferred by sections five, eight, and nine of the act to which this act is amendatory shall be abrogated by this act, and the same are hereby extended to all public lands affected by this act; and 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 ninth section of the act to which this act is amendatory. But nothing in this act shall be construed to repeal, impair, or in any way affect the provisions of the "Act granting to A. Sutro the right of way and other privileges to aid in the construction of a draining and exploring tunnel to the Comstock lode, in the State of Nevada,” approved July twentyfifth, eighteen hundred and sixty-six.

Approved July 9, 1870.

Tunnel claims.

The fourth section of the mining statute of May 10, 1872, is as fol lows, viz:

SEC. 4. That where a tunnel is run for the development of a vein or lode, or for the discovery of mines, the owners of such tunnel shall have the right of possession of all veins or lodes within three thousand feet from the face of such tunnel on the line thereof, not previously known to exist, discovered in such tunnel, to the same extent as if discovered from the surface; and locations on the line of such tunnel of veins or lodes not appearing on the surface, made by other parties after the commencement of the tunnel, and while the same is being prosecuted with reasonable diligence, shall be invalid; but failure to prosecute the work on the tunnel for six months shall be consid ered as an abandonment of the right to all undiscovered veins on the line of said tunnel.

Some differences of opinion existed among parties in interest as to the correct construction of this section of the law, and it was decided by this office, in response to certain inquiries on the subject, that the

line of the tunnel is the width thereof, and no more, and that upon this line only is prospecting for blind lodes prohibited while the working of the tunnel is in progress, and the right is granted to the tunnel owners to fifteen hundred feet of each blind lode, not previously known to exist, which may be discovered in such tunnel, but that other parties are in no way debarred from prospecting for blind lodes or running tunnels so long as they keep without the line of the tunnel as herein defined; the said line being required by regulations to be marked on the surface by stakes or monuments placed along the same from the face, or point of commencement, to the terminus of the tunnel line aforesaid. When a lode is struck or discovered for the first time by running a tunnel, the tunnel owners have the option of recording their claim of fifteen hundred feet all on one side of the point of discovery or intersection, or partly upon one and partly upon the other side thereof, but in no case can they so record a claim as to absorb the actual or constructive claim · or possession of other parties on a lode which has been discovered and claimed outside the line of the tunnel, before the discovery thereof in the tunnel.

Expenditures in running a mining tunnel, before a lode is struck therein, not tantamount to expenditures on the lode.

The question being officially presented whether the fact of a company running a tunnel intended to develop several known parallel lodes claimed by them would relieve such company from the legal amount of labor or expenditure required to hold each lode, the matter was submitted to the head of the Department for his instructions, the views of this office in the premises being expressed in effect as follows, viz: Previous to the passage of the mining act of July 26, 1866, (14 Statutes, 251,) upon the discovery of mineral bearing veins or lodes in any portion of the public domain, the miners in the locality would at once call a meeting and adopt a code of laws or regulations governing the length of claims upon lodes, and the width of surface ground which might be taken therewith; the amount of work or expenditure necessary to be made annually upon each claim, in order to hold it and prevent it from being subject to relocation; fix the boundaries of the district within which these regulations should be enforced; provide for the election of a recorder of mining claims for such district, &c.

In the great number of mining districts thus found in the public domain the regulations adopted, although preserving a similarity in some leading points, differed materially in others. For instance, while the regulations of one district permitted an individual to locate three hundred feet on the course or strike of the lode, another district would allow but two hundred feet to be taken, and another district perhaps still less. Like differences existing with regard to the width of surface ground taken for the convenient working of the lode, and the amount of labor necessary to be done, or improvements made thereon, to hold one of these "claims" or "locations" for a specified time. After these claims or locations had been taken up and recorded at the mining recorder's office, they became the property of the locators, and could, under all the mining regulations, be bought and sold as real estate; the courts of the mineral States and Territories recognizing these titles as good and sufficient as against all persons and powers, except the United States, the purchaser of one of these possessory claims assuming the same obligations to do the annual amount of labor, or make the expenditure necessary to hold the claim so purchased, as the district laws required of his

predecessor in interest; a failure to do which subjected the claim to relocation by others.

These local regulations have constituted the miners' laws, and have formed the basis of miners' titles since the first discoveries of the precious metals in the public domain.

The congressional mining statute of July 26, 1866, (14 Statutes, 251,) was the first general legislation by that body looking toward the disposal of these carefully reserved mineral lands, and it being the policy of Congress to disturb as little as possible the existing order of things in the mining regions, said enactment provided the means by which these possessory rights, having their inception under district regulations, could be converted into complete titles by patent from the United States; one of the conditions, precedent to the sale of a mining claim by the United States, being that the applicant for title must have previously • occupied and improved his claim in accordance with the local customs and rules of the mining district in which it was situated. Said act, in its fourth section, fixed a limit for claims on all veins or lodes from and after its passage, which limit could not be exceeded, no matter what the local regulations allowed; said congressional maximum being 200 feet along the course of the lode to each locator, with an additional claim of 200 feet for discovery to the discoverer of the lode, and fixed 3,000 feet as the utmost extent that could be located or claimed upon the same by any association of persons after the 26th July, 1866.

The General Land Office has always construed these limitations to mean that, after the 26th of July, 1866, no individual, in any district, could locate" or "claim" more than 200 feet on the course of any lode discovered thereafter, unless he was the discoverer, when he could take an extra claim of 200 feet, and that not more than 3,000 feet could thereafter be located or claimed upon any one vein by any association of persons, and that to locate 3,000 feet of such lode would require not less than fourteen bona fide locators to be associated together, each taking a claim of 200 feet, with 200 feet additional to the discoverer, or fifteen locators where they claim without regard to the discovery right. In making these locations the miners had the option of taking up and recording their claims either as segregated individual locations of 200 feet each, aud working or disposing of them as such, or they could associate together and locate a number of these claims in common, provided the legal maximum of 3,000 feet was not exceeded after the 26th of July, 1866. The said statute of July 26, 1866, did not fix any amount of work or expenditure as necessary to hold a claim, but left that to be regulated by the miners themselves. Congress did, however, prescribe that an amount of not less than $1,000 should be expended on the claim as one of the conditions precedent to obtaining a patent.

The mining statute of May 10, 1872, repeals said act of July 26, 1866, in part, and after its passage permits 1,500 linear feet to be located as one claim on a lode, which location may be made by an individual or by an association of persons jointly; but no lode claim located after the passage of said act of May 10, 1872, can exceed 1,500 feet, whether located by one or more persons.

The fifth section of said statute of 1872 provides, among other things, that

On each claim located after the passage of this act, and until a patent shall have been issued therefor, not less than one hundred dollars' worth of labor shall be performed or improvements made during each year.

And that

On all claims located prior to the passage of this act, ten dollars' worth of labor shall