MR. JUSTICE VAN DEVANTER delivered the opinion of the court.

By a bill in equity exhibited in the District Court the appellant seeks the annulment of three judgments of special courts of eminent domain in Harrison, Jackson and Hancock Counties, Mississippi, purporting to condemn portions of its right of way in those counties for the use of the appellee. According to the allegations of the bill, when given the effect that must be given to them for present purposes, the case is this: The appellant has a fee simple title to the land constituting the right of way and is in possession, and the appellee is asserting a right to subject portions of the right of way to its use under the three judgments, recently obtained. The appellant insists, for various reasons fully set forth, that the judgments were procured and rendered in such disregard of applicable local laws as to be clearly invalid, and that they operate to becloud its title. The matter in controversy exceeds, exclusive of interest and costs, the sum or value of $3,000, the right of way is within the district in which the bill was filed, and the appellant and appellee are, respectively, Kentucky and New York corporations. The prayer of the bill is, that the judgments be held null and void and the appellee enjoined from exercising or asserting any right under them. Appearing specially for the purpose, the appellee objected to the District Court's jurisdiction, upon the ground that neither of the parties was a resident of that district and that the suit was not one that could be brought in a district other than that of the residence of one of them without the appellee's consent. The court sustained the objection, dismissed the bill, and allowed this direct appeal under § 238 of the Judicial Code.

We are only concerned with the jurisdiction of the District Court as a Federal court, that is, with its power to entertain the suit under the laws of the United States.

Fore River Shipbuilding Co. v. Hagg, 219 U. S. 175; United States v. Congress Construction Co., 222 U. S. 199; Chase v. Wetzlar, 225 U. S. 79, 83. Whether upon the showing in the bill the appellant is entitled to the relief sought is not a jurisdictional question in the sense of § 238 and is not before us. Smith v. McKay, 161 U. S. 355; Citizens' Savings & Trust Co. v. Illinois Central Railroad Co., 205 U. S. 46, 58; Darnell v. Illinois Central Railroad Co., 225 U. S. 243.

As the matter in controversy is of the requisite value and the parties are citizens of different States, the suit manifestly is within the general class over which the District Courts are given jurisdiction by the Judicial Code, § 24, cl. 1; so the question for decision is, whether the suit is cognizable in the particular District Court in which it was brought.

In distributing the jurisdiction conferred in general terms upon the District Courts, the code declares, in § 51, that, "except as provided in the six succeeding sections, no civil suit shall be brought in any district court against any person by any original process or proceeding in any other district than that whereof he is an inhabitant; but where the jurisdiction is founded only on the fact that the action is between citizens of different States, suit sh .ll be brought only in the district of the residence of either the plaintiff or the defendant." If this section be applicable' to suits which are local in their nature, as well as to such as are transitory (as to which see Casey v. Adams, 102 U. S. 66; Greeley v. Lowe, 155 U. S. 58; Ellenwood v. Marietta Chair Co., 158 U. S. 105; Kentucky Coal Lands Co. v. Mineral Development Co., 191 Fed. Rep. 899, 915), it is clear that the District Court in which the suit was brought cannot entertain it, unless one of the six succeeding sections provides otherwise, or the appellee waives its personal privilege of being sued only in the district of its or the appellant's residence. In re Moore, 209 U. S. 490;

Western Loan Co. v. Butte & Boston Mining Co., 210 U. S. 368.

The appellant relies upon § 57, one of the six succeeding sections, as adequately sustaining the jurisdiction. This section reads as follows:

"When in any suit commenced in any district court of the United States to enforce any legal or equitable lien upon or claim to, or to remove any incumbrance or lien or cloud upon the title to real or personal property within the district where such suit is brought, one or more of the defendants therein shall not be an inhabitant of or found within the said, district, or shall not voluntarily appear thereto, it shall be lawful for the court to make an order directing such absent defendant or defendants to appear, plead, answer, or demur by a 'day certain to be designated, which order shall be served on such absent defendant or defendants, if practicable, wherever found, and also upon the person or persons in possession or charge of said property, if any there be; or where such personal service upon such absent defendant or defendants is not practicable, such order shall be published in such manner as the court may direct, not less than once a week for six consecutive weeks. In case such absent defendant shall not appear, plead, answer, or demur within the time so limited, or within some further time, to be allowed by the court, in its discretion, and upon proof of the service or publication of said order and of the performance of the directions contained in the same, it shall be lawful for the court to entertain jurisdiction, and proceed to the hearing and adjudication of such suit in the same manner as if such absent defendant had been served with process within the said district; but said adjudication shall, as regards said absent defendant or defendants without appearance, affect only the property which shall have been the subject of the suit and under the jurisdiction of the court therein, within such district; and when a part of the said real or personal prop

erty against which such proceedings shall be taken shall be within another district, but within the same State, such suit may be brought in either district in said State: Provided, however, That any defendant or defendants not actually personally notified as above provided may, at any time within one year after final judgment in any suit mentioned in this section, enter his appearance in said. suit in said district court, and thereupon the said court shall make an order setting aside the judgment therein and permitting said defendant or defendants to plead therein on payment by him or them of such costs as the court shall deem just; and thereupon said suit shall be proceeded with to final judgment according to law."

It will be perceived that this section not only plainly contemplates that a suit "to remove any incumbrance, lien or cloud upon the title to real or personal property" shall be cognizable in the District Court of the district wherein the property is located, but expressly provides for notifying the defendant by personal service outside the district, and, if that be impracticable, by publication. The section has been several times considered by this court, and, unless there be merit in an objection yet to be noticed, the decisions leave no doubt of its applicability to the present suit, even though both parties reside outside the district. Greeley v. Lowe, 155 U. S. 58; Dick v. Foraker, Id. 404; Jellenik v. Huron Copper Co., 177 U. S. 1; Citizens' Savings & Trust Co. v. Illinois Central Railroad Co., 205 U. S. 46; Chase v. Wetzlar, 225 U. S. 79.

The appellee, after asserting that each of the judgments is void upon its face if the attack upon it in the bill is well taken, calls attention to the general rule that a bill in equity does not lie to cancel, as a cloud upon title, a conveyance or instrument that is void upon its face, and then insists that § 57 must be regarded as adopted in the light of that rule and as not intended to displace it or to embrace a suit brought in opposition to it. The difficulty

with this contention is that it seeks to make the usages of courts of equity the sole test of what constitutes a cloud upon title, so as to bring a suit to remove it within the operation of § 57, and disregards the bearing which the state law rightly has upon the question. As long ago as 1839 this court had occasion, in Clark v. Smith, 13 Pet. 195, to consider whether a Federal court sitting in the State of Kentucky could entertain a suit to remove a cloud from the title to real property in that State where the right to such relief depended upon a remedial statute of the State; and in the opinion, which fully sustained the jurisdiction, the court pointed out that the nature of the right was such that it could only be enforced in a court of equity, and then said (p. 203): "Kentucky has the undoubted power to regulate and protect individual rights to her soil, and to declare what shall form a cloud on titles; and having so declared, the courts of the United States, by removing such clouds, are only applying an old practice to a new equity created by the legislature. The state legislatures certainly have no authority to prescribe the forms and modes of proceeding in the courts of the United States; but having created a right, and at the same time prescribed the remedy to enforce it, if the remedy prescribed is substantially consistent with the ordinary modes of proceeding on the Chancery side of the Federal courts, no reason exists why it should not be pursued in the same form as it is in the state courts; on the contrary, propriety and convenience suggest, that the practice should not materially differ, where titles to lands are the subjects of investigation. And such is the constant course of the Federal courts." The principle of that decision has been reaffirmed and applied in many cases, one being Reynolds v. Crawfordsville Bank, 112 U. S. 405. It was a suit in the Circuit Court for the District of Indiana to remove a cloud from title in virtue of a statute of that State, and the objection was interposed that the deed sought to be