Land entry

“ Have hundreds of commodious harbors, a thousand leagues of coast, and a boundless ocean, been spread in the front of this land, and shall every purpose of utility to which they could apply be prohibited by the tenant of the woods? ”

“ There a hilly or mountainous interior putting obstacles in the way of landward expansion, sterile slopes, a paucity of level, arable land, an excessive or deficient rainfall withholding from agriculture the reward of tillage—some or all of these factors combined to compel the inhabitants to seek on the sea the livelihood denied by the land. ”

“ We have arid lands in the West, cut-over lands in the Northwest, Lake States, and South, and also swamp lands in the Middle West and South, which can be made available through the proper development. Much of this land can be made suitable for farm homes if properly handled. But it will require that each type of land be dealt with in its own particular fashion. The arid land will require water ”

“ At present, our whole land system is constructed to prevent their working. It is Nature's way alternately to gather together and to disperse abroad Our land laws are all on the side of gathering together. ”

“ A cable car took them to and from the lake, and beside the road they could see lots of land offered for sale at high foot-rates, with tall forest-trees still standing in them; others, partly built upon, and occupied by fine dwelling-houses, with the back yard full of charred stumps. ”

“ The environment could, of course, be chosen. At first only the most favorable regions need be attempted for regular transportation, regions of level plain and farm land, or of lake and river surrounded by country not too rough and precipitous. ”

“ Under such conditions, the settlers should reserve sufficient woodlands for their home needs, carefully distinguishing between the land that is best for agricultural purposes and the land that is best for forestry purposes, and thus doubling their resources. ”

“ It was necessary, of course, that the place to be selected should be pretty low land, and near the river; for if the land was high, the work of excavating the basins would have been so much increased as to render the undertaking impracticable. ”

“ Immediately on the shores of the great lake, the land is generally flat for two or three miles inland; and as the farms are there measured out in long, narrow strips, a mile and a quarter long, and a quarter of a mile wide, the back parts of the lots, which are reserved for firewood, are only visible at a distance. This narrow belt of the primeval forest, which runs along the rear of all the lots in the first line of settlements, or concession as it is here called, necessarily conceals the houses and clearings of the next concession, unless the land beyond rises into hills. ”

“ Some of them may have known the water-ways better than any of the land-ways—for their signal stations were erected on the shores of many of our important rivers—but the location of their heaviest seats of population was where we find the richest lands and the heaviest populations today, and that is in what may be called the interior of the continent, or along the smaller rivers. ”

“ There is one other peculiar characteristic of landed property in this colony which I must mention. All the carriage is by water, not only from the works to the town, but from the fields to the works, and even from field to field. The whole country is intersected by drains, which are necessary to carry off the surface waters; there is no natural fall of water, or next to none, and but for its drains and sluices the land would be flooded in wet weather. ”

“ No allotment of land will be allowed to have a frontage, on any considerable river, of more than about a fourth part of its exterior boundary line; and the amount of frontage, in any particular case, will be awarded agreeably to the report and recommendation of the Surveyor General.
"7thly. No person will receive a grant of land, until he shall have fulfilled the conditions relative to cultivation and improvement, on all other grants which he may have previously received. ”

“ Finally, in valuing land, the proximity to good roads and easy access to them is of great importance—and I say easy access to them because it sometimes happens that land is situated on the wrong side of an unbridged river which is sure to be in flood for many months of the year. ”

“ We gave the greatest land-grant ever given to an individual or a corporation in the history of the world—sixty millions of acres; when I say to Mr Hill, of course I mean the Northern Pacific. We gave outright a strip of land 2000 miles long, 20 miles wide in the States and 40 miles wide in the Territories! Worse than that: instead of giving it in a solid body, we gave every even section, so that in timber lands it carried an immense advantage over anybody else coming in from the outside. ”

“ So well are we persuaded of the utility and correctness of these brief hints, that, in selecting a farm, we should regard the location more than the quality of the soil. The latter we could mend easily; while we should find it difficult to move our farm to a more favorable location. Poor land near a city or large town, or on some great thoroughfare, we should much prefer to good land far removed from market, or in an unpleasant location. ”

“ Conditions here institute an incessant struggle between man and nature;596 but the rewards of victory are too great to count the cost. The construction of sea-walls, embankment of rivers, reclamation of marshes, the cutting of canals for drains and passways in a water-soaked land, the conversion of lakes into meadow, the rectification of tortuous streams for the greater economy of this silt-made soil, all together constitute the greatest geographical transformation that man has brought about on the earth's surface.597 ”

“ Of the travellers who passed over the vast stretches of prairie or mountain or woodland, many saw the possibilities of this vast land, and prophesied as to what might be wrought here, when, in the dim and distant future, which none could yet foresee, settlements should have pushed out from the east and occupied the land. ”

“ This is the commencement of a tract of country more fertile than any we met with, except that of the Delta of the Fraser; and yet the amount of good land is of but small extent. Here and there a rich bottom, a consolidated marsh, or the lowland on the banks of some stream, had been converted into a productive farm, and the low hills afford plenty of pasturage; but the whole of the rising ground is merely sand and shingle, and nothing but bunch-grass flourishes there. On the road we met a small bullock-wagon, escorted by about twenty armed miners on foot. ”

“ When the land has been acquired, a plan for a colony is worked out, with provision for necessary roads, town sites, irrigation or drainage systems, utilization of water power, social centers, experimental farms, etc. ”

“ The proximity of land to roads is a point of great importance in its selection, both as directly and indirectly affecting the outlay in forming a plantation, and probably for a long time determining the large item of expense under the head of transport of produce. ”

“ As one effect of the subdivision of the land, the soil, so far as nature permits, is highly cultivated, its appearance fertile, finished, beautiful, and in striking contrast with the dominating vast, bare mountain rocks and snowbeds. The many towns and cities bear abundant signs of a general prosperity, their roads, bridges, stores, residences, and public buildings betokening in the inhabitants industry and energy, and freedom to employ these qualities. ”

“ Other hats, coats and chairs can be made without limit. But more land cannot be made, nor can anything be substituted for it. No human being can say that he exists independently of land. Land is literally the foundation of human life. ”

“ It is easy to pass along a country road without observing half of the farmhouses, so many being situated at a distance from the highway, and others hidden by the thick hedges and the foliage of the trees. This is especially the case in districts chiefly occupied in pasture farming, meadow land being usually found along the banks of rivers, on broad level plains, or in slightly undulating prairie-like country. ”

“ The boundaries of the National Forests also are constantly being examined to determine whether they include all the land, and only the land, to be contained within them, and whether they should be extended or reduced. ”

“ But it is on shore that the story of a gigantic land-slide is most easily and plainly written and recorded. Extending back from the sea for a mile is a tract of land worthy to be made a show place by the government. Large trees are standing on naked roots which must have once clasped fallen timber of enormous diameter, pieces of which are still remaining in their embrace. A horse-man could ride under them, or a party could make a camp beneath them. ”

“ There is a standing controversy waged among settlers, as to whether it is better to take up such land as ours or to go in for a tract of open fern-land. On open lands you can easily clear the ground, and, though it will not, as a rule, yield grass for mere surface-sowing, yet the plough can be put into it within a year or two. ”

“ The tillable land, varying in breadth from one hundred yards to several miles, lay upon the water-courses, which ramified the surface of the country, and formed, when swollen by rains or overflow, a perfect network of watery communications. ”

“ In considering the land situation as it exists, it is true that the ownership of land or, rather, the access to land, is of primary importance. The question arises, Is there enough land in the United States for all citizens who desire to become cultivators? ”

“ We have in such facts as these a complete disproof of the necessity for those great changes of sea and land which are continually appealed to by those who think land-connection the only efficient means of accounting for the migration of animals or plants ”

“ A migration route, therefore, may be anything from a narrow path that adheres closely to some definite geographical feature, such as a river valley or a coast line, to a broad boulevard that leads in the desired direction and follows only the general trend of the land mass. ”

“ There are between 70,000,000 and 80,000,000 acres of swamp and overflowed lands in the United States of which about 60,000,000 acres can be reclaimed for agricultural purposes, and there are about 200,000,000 acres of cut-over or logged-off lands which are suitable for agricultural development. ”

“ LAND ACQUISITION- The United States shall not acquire for the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail any land or interest in land outside the exterior boundary of any federally-managed area without the consent of the owner of the land or interest in land.'. ”

“ To this the Forest Service replied by throwing open to agricultural settlement every acre of land, lying within the limits of the national forests, which was more suitable for agriculture than forest culture. ”

“ When the land was managed by a proprietory possessing intelligence, energy, and foresight, it had, especially in minor details, a grace and picturesque beauty of its own. When every foot of land was carefully cultivated, when the two great streams were thoroughly kept in hand, their banks and those of the numerous canals intersecting the plains were overhung with palms. ”

“ From three hundred to five hundred acres is the most that we can water from one dam and canal in that district of country, while lower down, the same labor would encircle a field of six or eight thousand acres of better land ”

“ The land which now supports horses for transport on turnpike roads would then support men, or produce corn for food, and the horses return to agricultural pursuits.
The objection that a quantity of land exists in the country capable of supporting horses alone, and that such land would be thrown out of cultivation, scarcely deserves notice here. The existence of any considerable quantity of such land is extremely doubtful. What is the soil which will feed a horse, and not feed oxen, cows, or sheep, or produce food for man? ”

“ Those who shall transport themselves as aforesaid shall have land set forth unto them, according to the proportion of twenty Acres, besides Lakes and Rivers, for every Male of twelve years old and upwards, and ten Acres for every other Male or Female, in some convenient place of the said Island; and in case any whole Plantation, That is to say, the Governours and greatest part of the people shall remove themselves, they shall be preferred in respect of the place of their sitting down, that it may be near some good Harbour commodious for Commerce and Navigation. ”

“ As the herbage grows more scanty and the water supply more precarious, the sheep stations themselves become81 larger and fewer, till they give place to desert. Perhaps the greatest surprise to a European visitor is the kind of land which in the more distant stations, where the rainfall sinks very close to the margin of double figures per annum, is called pasture land. ”

“ As they progressed farther and farther southwestward the land became more open, the farm-houses were greater distances apart, cultivated fields less frequent, the towns were fewer in number and diminishing in size, the rivers grew smaller and smaller, and trees almost vanished from the landscape. ”

“ Access to the open area, as its name suggests, is not likewise restricted to the general public. The open area is primarily rangeland, agricultural land, and land used for residential and commercial development. ”

“ The land, running to several hundred acres, was comparatively worthless, mere jumbled stretch of sand and pines and heathery hills; too remote from any building centre to be easily sold, and of no avail for agricultural purposes. ”

“ Little of the older country is worn out. Some of the best land values now lie in the old East and South. Movement to these lands from the Western lands is now beginning, and this is a sound tendency, as are most spontaneous movements inside the farming business itself; the railroads and real estate dealers may be expected to even up the situation. ”