Samuel Freeman Miller

“ The company, doubtless, as against the United States, acquired, upon the construction of the road, the right to select and claim the land as a part of the intended indemnity, if the deficiency was such as to justify it. What right the company acquired previous to selection as against the defendant, a homestead settler, is a question which presents no little embarrassment, and upon which there there is not, perhaps, entire harmony in the adjudication. ”

“ The Air-line Company had before this time surveyed and located the line of the road from Lyons to the Missouri river through the town of Cedar Rapids, and the map of this survey and location had been accepted by the state of Iowa and the land-office of the United States as the true line, and as governing the location of the land grant for that road. A road had also been built by another company, the Chicago, Iowa & Nebraska, which had no land grant, from a point on the Mississippi river within three miles of Lyons city to Cedar Rapids. ”

“ No right existed in plaintiff to all these lands, or to any specific sections of them, during this period; no obligation of the government to withdraw them from sale until plaintiff filed a map definitely showing the entire line of its road in the general land-office. The defendants purchased from officers who had the power to sell. They acquired a valid title. If plaintiff has been injured it is by its own laches. If there is no land to satisfy its demand, it is because it delayed over three years to file its map to establish the line of its road, and for years afterwards to make selections. ”