David Josiah Brewer

“ Contiguity to the railroad is the same fact in each. The significance of this was recognized in the Healey Case. Indeed, the whole controversy in that case was as to the matter of price, and grew out of the fact that after the passage of the desert land act the interior department at first ruled that its effect was to reduce the price of even sections within railroad place limits, entered under it, from $2.50 to $1.25 an acre, while in 1889 a change was made in its rulings, and it was thereafter held that the act worked no such reduction. ”

“ Counsel for appellee pick out a sentence or two in the opinion in that case, and, severing them from the balance, insist that this court decided that land within the place limits of a railroad land grant is wholly removed from the operation of the desert land law,-as much so as if it had already been conveyed to a private owner,-and conclude that, being so wholly separated from the reach of that law, an attempted entry thereunder is absolutely void, and may be abandoned by the entryman at any time. ”

“ That all lands, exclusive of timber lands and mineral lands, which will not, without irrigation, produce some agricultural crop, shall be deemed desert lands within the meaning of this act, which facts shall be ascertained by proof of two or more credible witnesses under oath, whose affidavits shall be filed in the land office in which said tract of land may be situated.' The reasons which established and justified the policy of double price for the former apply as fully to lands which had to be reclaimed before they could be cultivated as to lands which needed no reclamation. ”