John Catron

“ But the plaintiff in error is free to confess that in some of the other States of the Union perhaps in a majority of them, a contrary doctrine has been laid down, and that the decisions of the State of Missouri, and of the Supreme Court of the United States, may be cited in opposition to the views which it is the duty of the plaintiff in error to enforce. ”

“ It is submitted, that nothing but a singular confusion of the senses in which the same word is used, in two distinct propositions, together with a total ignoring of the physical truths which underlie the whole learning upon this important subject, could have led those who labor under the geographical mistake above-mentioned into the adoption of the startling conclusion for which the plaintiff in error contends.
In the first place, it is far from being true that all the rivers of England are unfit for navigation above tide-water, and are not public rivers above that point. ”

“ In considering the question of what rivers being above tidewater are yet navigable, in fact, courts of justice have repeatedly shown an impatience of the suggestion that an insignificant rivulet, which is yet subject to have its volume so increased by freshets as to render it capable of floating a ship of the line for a few hours, deserves, for that reason, to be called a navigable stream. ”

“ Whether the rivulet be liable to assume a momentary likeness to a river, under the influence of heavy and unusual rains, or the river, under the uniform supply which is vouchsafed to the principal inland streams of the United States, be kept to a depth affording almost constant service to the public, in the one case as in the other the supply is from the rain, and the navigableness of the stream (temporary and transient, or practically permanent) is due to this source alone. ”

“ The court then proceeds to say, that there is nothing in the objection; that there is no ebb and flow of the tide in the lakes and Western rivers; that the ebb and flow of the tide does not make the waters suitable for admiralty jurisdiction, nor does the absence of a tide render them unfit. ”

“ The examination of the second proposition brings up the inquiry, whether the eastern boundary of the town of St. Louis, as it stood incorporated at the date of the act of 13th June, 1812, was the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi river; and whether the out-boundary, run by the surveyor general in 1840, had for its eastern boundary the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi river. ”

“ In execution of the above power, the Legislature of Missouri passed an act on the 13th of February, 1833, creating a school corporation. By it all free persons residing in St. Louis were erected into a corporation, who were directed to take possession of all the lots which had been reserved for school purposes, the title to which was vested in the corporation. ”

“ In some places, as on the eastern slope of the South American continent, upwards of three hundred inches in depth of rain fall every year. There is accordingly on that eastern slope such a system of magnificent rivers as can nowhere else be found on the face of the globe. No rain, or scarcely any, falls on the north of Africa ”