The act of appropriation for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1877, (vol. 19, p. 120,) provided for the expenditure of $300,000 in the survey of public lands and private land claims. This sum has been apportioned among the several surveying districts as follows:

Under date August 23, 1876, instructions, modified in accordance with the requirements of the act of appropriation, were issued to the several surveyors-general, substantially as follows:

By an act making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1877, and for other purposes, approved July 31, 1876, there was appropriated:

1st. "For survey of the public lands and private land claims, three hundred thousand dollars: Provided, That the sum hereby appropriated shall be expended in such surveys as the public interest may require, under the direction of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, and at such rates as the Secretary of the Interior shall prescribe, not exceeding the rate herein authorized: Provided, That no lands shall be surveyed under this appropriation except"First. Those adapted to agriculture without artificial irrigation.

"Second. Irrigable lands, or such as can be redeemed, aud for which there is sufficient accessible water for the reclamation and cultivation of the same, not otherwise utilized or claimed.

"Third. Timber lands bearing timber of commercial value.

Fourth. Coal lands containing coal of commercial value. "Fifth. Exterior boundary of town sites.

"Sixth. Private land claims.

"The cost of such surveys shall not exceed ten dollars per mi'e for standard lines, and the starting point for said surveys may be established by triangulation; seven dollars for township and six dollars for section lines, except that the Commissioner of the General Land Office may allow for the survey of standard lines in heavily timbered land a sum not exceeding thirteen dollars per mile." "And provided further, That before any land granted to any railroad company by the United States shall be conveyed to

such company, or any persons entitled thereto under any of the acts incorporating or relating to said company, unless such company is exempted by law from the payment of such cost, there shall first be paid into the Treasury of the United States the cost of surveying, collecting, and conveying the same by the said company or persons in interest."

In conformity to law the Secretary of the Interior, under date of the 22d instant, (August, 1876,) out of said appropriation of $300,000, apportioned the sum of $13,500 for the surveys in your surveying district at the rates prescribed by law, which must not be exceeded in letting contracts for the field work, specifically authorized under the six heads hereinbefore enumerated, and you are hereby directed not to expend any portion of the apportionment in the survey of any other quality of lands than such as are prescribed by the foregoing provisions of the appropriation act.

In order to secure a strict compliance with the law, you are instructed to give priority of survey to lands already settled upon, and to require your deputies to execute the work in person, or under their immediate personal supervision in the field and in acordance with the printed manual of surveying instructions, and your special instructions, which must not conflict with the manual or the existing laws.

You will caution your deputies, who must be practical surveyors and familiar with the Government surveys, not to commence their surveys before the approval of their contracts by the Commissioner of the General Land Office.

With the view of reaching distant settlements awaiting the extension of the lines of public surveys, and to bring such localities within the range of the regular system of the public surveys, provision of law has been made for the determination of the starting point of surveys by triangulation instead of starting from standard parallels or the auxiliar bases prolonged over sterile and unsurveyable lands.

It will, therefore, be in your power to contract for the survey of such tracts, in case exigencies occur which seem to require it. The cost of triangulating in such cases not being provided for by law, will not constitute a proper charge in the accounts of your deputies against the Government.

Where the country intervening between the public surveys and the unsurveyed settlements is of an arable or surveyable character, the proper base should be extended in the usual manner, for which the deputy would be paid at the legal rate.

In letting contracts for the subdivision of the public lands, you are required to stipulate the condition that the survey must include all the lands in the township contracted for subdivision, which are by law classed as surveyable; and, except in case of triangulation, that the deputy shall start from the proper bases or standard parallels.

If these last shall not have been established, that must first be done, and then, if there are no exterior lines of the township surveyed, the deputy must first survey them and finally subdivide the township into sections, running, measuring, and marking the lines from south to north, in the regular process, avoiding the practice in some surveying districts of surveying partly from north to south and partly from south to north, leaving the interior of the township partly unsectionized, ostensibly for specious reasons assigned, that the rough and mountainous features of the country precluded the possibility of extending the lines over the same. Subsequently, the unsurveyed portion of such townships is frequently settled upon, and under the deposit system the survey of the township is completed without difficulty, except that the last surveyor finds it impossible in such cases to connect his work with the corners of the previous surveys by due north and south or east and west lines as the law requires.

In order to obviate similar irregularities in your district you must enjoin your deputies to strictly adhere to the system of public surveys, and comply with the printed Manual of Surveying Instructions and the existing laws as illustrated on diagrams A, B, and C of the Manual, and the requirements of instructions from this office dated April 14, 1875, in reference to the establishment of stone corners by witnessing them by pits. The modification introduced in the supplemental printed instructions of June 1, 1864, requiring navigable rivers to be meandered on one bank only, is hereby rescinded, and you will therefore cause both banks of such streams to be meandered in future, conformably to the printed Manual of Surveying Instructions, of February 22, 1855, at page 15, legalized by act of Congress approved May 30, 1862.

In cases where townships have formerly been partly surveyed, and it becomes necessary to complete the same, you are directed to instruct your deputies to fully describe the old corners ident fied by them in the field, and from which they will start in the completion of the surveys, and to state in their field notes the kind of corner, bearing trees, or other witnesses to the same, so that there will be no doubt as to the proper corner from which additional surveys are init ated.

The particular localities in your surveying district requiring earliest surveys are left to your election, but you will exercise your best judgment in the selection thereof, so as to subserve the interests of the actual and bona fide settlers on public lands who may apply to you for the extension of the lines of public surveys.

At the same time you will not omit other meritorious claims, and you will bear in mind that you must confine the surveying liabilities within the sum apportioned and

appropriated for the present fiscal year, which must not be exceeded under any circumstances.

For the information of this office you are required, whenever special instructions are issued by you at the time of contracting for work, to forward a copy of the same with the contract, and when instructions are issued during the performance of the work in the field a copy of the instructions must accompany the returns of survey.

As the form of contract now used includes the preliminary oath of the deputy, it is unnecessary to repeat such oath at the commencement of the field notes of survey. When one final affidavit is made to cover the returns of several townships, you are required to have stitched together the notes of all the townships included in such affidavits.

Very respectfully,

J. A. WILLIAMSON,

Commissioner.

As an additional safeguard in the promotion and preservation of the integrity of the public surveys, the following circular, bearing date January 30, 1877, was issued to the several surveyors general:

SIR: The attention of this Department having been directed to the fact that persons holding commissions and under bonds as deputy mineral surveyors are in some instances employed as clerks and draughtsmen in the offices of the respective surveyors general, I have to direct that such employment be immediately discontinu d, being contrary to the well settled rules of the Department and to that sound public policy which requires that the entire public service be kept free and separate from that of private individuals.

It will at once be manifest to the most casual observation that the entry upon your records, and the preparation for your approval of surveys in mineral cases, should not be confided to the hands and judgment of the persons employed by interested claimauts in making the surveys of the claimed locations upon the ground.

Persons employed by you in such confidential relations to the Government as clerks and draughtsmen, will, therefore, be required to surrender their commissions as mineral surveyors, or sever their connection with your office as employés. J. A. WILLIAMSON,

JANUARY 30, 1877.
Approved :

Commissioner.

Z. CHANDLER, Secretary of the Interior.

Abstracts of operations during the fiscal year in the several surveying districts. For detailed statements see accompanying annual reports of the surveyors general.

Idaho. The sum of $13,500 was assigned for surveys in Idaho. Under this apportionment, four cor tracts were let. The returns of two contracts have not been made, on account of the late period of going to the field. Four townships were surveyed, the area of which is 92,111 acres; 334 townships of public lands previously surveyed, having an area of 5,463,541 acres, and 38 townships of Indian lands, with an area of 463,182 acres, make a total of 6,018,834 acres surveyed, up to June 30, 1877. 85,868.20 was expended for salaries, and $1,496.63 for incidentals-both from regular appropriations. Twelve township plats and four descriptive lists were prepared. The sum of $87 was deposited for office work on six mineral claims. The estimates for the year ending June 30, 1879, are, for salaries, $7,000; incidental expenses, $2,000; surveys, $34,840; total, $43,840. The surveyor general recommends the sale of the sage-brush lands in large quantities-states that they can be irrigated and made to produce large crops of grain, and that these lands never will be taken up under the homestead and pre-emption laws. He also recommends that the timber lands be sold for cash, in tracts of eighty or one hundred and sixty acres to one individual, and thus be made to yield a revenue to the Government.

Washington Territory.-Out of the assignment of $20,000 for public surveys in the Territory of Washington during the year ending June 30, 1877, there were let five contracts.

Owing to the lateness of the passage of the appropriation bill, in August, 1876, many of the surveys contracted for had not been returned at the end of the year.

Out of the special deposits of $2,226.98 for public surveys, four contracts were let, the survey under one of which was disapproved, and the money refunded to the depositors.

The area surveyed and returned up to June 30, 1877, out of the year's assignment and special deposits, was 311,692 acres, involving the running of 1,069 miles of standard, township, section, and meander lines.

There was also surveyed during the year 80,720 acres out of the assignment for the preceding year, with distances run and marked of 306 miles of township, section, and meander lines.

Owing to the reduced rates per mile for surveys, none were made west of the Cascade Mountains.

The original, duplicate, and triplicate plats of 27 townships, with transcripts of the field notes and descriptive lists of 76 townships for the United States Land Office, were prepared in the office of the United States surveyor general.

The amount expended for salaries of the surveyor general and his clerks was $7.873.81, of which $7,061.14 was appropriated by act of August 15, 1876, $400 by deficiency appropriation, and $412.67 was deposited for office work.

The estimates for the year ending June 30, 1879, are $88,704 for public surveys, and $12,400 for salaries.

Arizona. For the year ending June 30, 1877, the United States surveyor general made four contracts for surveys of public land, payable out of the assignment of $13,500; also, two contracts payable out of special deposits, one being for location No. 5, heirs of Luis Maria Baca; the other for township 16 S., R. 25 E., containing Sulphur Spring ranch. Number of miles surveyed was 2,041. Thirty townships were subdivided in whole or in part, making an area surveyed during the year of 603,000 acres of public land, which, with the surveys prior to June 30, 1876, amounts to 3,773,033 acres.

There were surveyed twenty-three mining claims, and deposits for office work on same amounted to $920. The public lands were surveyed upon application of bona fide settlers.

The amount paid for salaries during the year was $7,797.83, of which $1,500 was deposited by individuals, and the balance was from the appropriation; $1,490.67 was expended for incidentals.

The number of plats made in the surveyor general's office was 208, including 92 of mining claims.

Estimates.-For surveys of public lands during year ending June 30, 1879, $20,000, and for survey of confirmed private claims, $5,000; for salaries, $9,500, including $2,500 for a clerk to aid in investigation of title to private land claims; for incidental expenses, $2,500. Total, $37,000.

In view of the extensive and important grazing interests in Arizona, the surveyor general reports that increased appropriation for surveys is necessary, and at the same time a change in the law, so that grazing lands may be surveyed and title to them obtained by persons pursuing that brauch of industry, and also by settlers in narrow valleys, where the lands now classed by law as surveyable only include parts of quar

ter sections, and the adjacent grazing lands are literally classed unsurveyable.

Desert land act.-Not quite one hundred declaratory statements made under it, twenty-six of which are on unsurveyed land, nearly all by actual residents of Arizona. Some applicants under the act have taken their claims in a zigzag shape, confining it to lands on or near a level with the streams.

The surveyor general cites one case where a claim was taken so as to embrace fifty-four corners. These are not connected with the public surveys. Recommends an amendment to the law to avoid the difficulty in future of having to close the lines of public surveys upon such irregular-shaped tracts.

Dakota Territory.-Amount of field work executed during the year ending June 30, 1877:

Township lines 23 miles 51.61 chains, comprising sixty-five townships, with an area of 1,488,003 acres, making a total of 17,800,664 acres surveyed in the Territory, exclusive of Indian and military reservations. The sum expended for field work was $23,500, and was divided into ten different contracts.

In the office of the United States surveyor general there were prepared the original duplicate and triplicate plats of the sixty-five surveyed townships, and transcripts of the field notes were prepared and forwarded to the General Land Office.

The rapid development of the mineral resources of the Black Hills country will greatly increase the office work during the present fiscal year.

The estimates for the year ending June 30, 1879, by the United States surveyor general, are as follows:

For surveys...

For salaries of surveyor general and clerks.
For contingent expenses.

$50,000

6,500

2,500

535

Nebraska.-The sums available for surveys of public lands were $25,000 from the general appropriation, and $250.87 deposited by the Union Pacific Railroad Company for field work. Of the former sum, all except $300.86 has been paid upon work embraced in two contracts. Payment has been made of $2,019.15 out of deficiency appropriation, to White and Hull, for former survey of Ottoe and Missouria Indian reservation. A contract for a survey of Fort Kearney reservation, under act of July 21, 1876, appropriating $3,000, was entered into, the returns of which have not yet been made. Seventy-two miles of standard, miles of exterior, and 3,371 miles of subdivisional lines were run and marked. Fifty-six townships were subdivided. The sum of $5,607.32 has been expended for salaries, and $1,698.54 for incidental expenses. The amount of special deposits made by railroad companies remaining unexpended at the commencement of the year, was $9,794.07, to which $10.23 has been added, making the present unexpended balance of spe cial deposits for office work $9,804.30. There remains an unexpended balance of the appropriation for salaries, for the year, amounting to $322.84. Original, duplicate, and triplicate maps, transcripts of field notes, and descriptive lists of fifty-four townships were prepared during the year. The estimates for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1879, are : For surveys, $88,785; salaries, $11,600; incidental expenses, $3,000. Total for the service, $103,385. The field of future surveying operations will be for the most part the section of country watered by the Niobrara River.