LAND GRANTS IN AID OF INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS. 169 
watering-places, and workshops, essential to the convenient use of the 
road, certain plats of land, not exceeding five acres in any one spot, nor 
nearer than fifteen miles to each other. 
The third section gave the company the right to take from the public 
lands earth, stone, or timber necessary for the construction of the road; 
and provided that unless the work was commenced within two years after 
the approval of the act, and completed within eight years thereafter, the 
grant should “cease and determine”. It provided, moreover, that if the 
road should be abandoned or discontinued, even after its completion, the 
grant was to ‘‘cease and determine”. 
So far as can be learned, this road was never completed. It is inserted 
so fully for the purpose of showing the gradual growth of the system. 
Next to’this came a grant to the East Florida and other railroads, 
similar in general terms to those previously referred to. It required, how- 
ever, the companies to file, with the Commissioner of the General Land 
Office, maps showing the location of their roads. This was to be done 
within six months after such locations. Iam unable to find that any of 
those roads were ever constructed. Certainly, no evidence thereof was ever 
furnished the General Land Office. 
A grant similar to the one to the New Orleans and Nashville company 
was made by act of March 3, 1837, to the Atchafalaya Railroad and Bank- 
ing Company in Louisiana. 
Many grants of like character and extent were made from time to 
time, as also donations in favor of various other internal improvements. 
The greatest of these latter, however, were the grants in aid of improving 
the navigation of the Des Moines River in Iowa, and the Fox and Wiscon- 
sin Rivers in Wisconsin, which were approved August 8, 1846. 
The first of these made a grant to the then Territory of Iowa, for the 
purpose of improving “the navigation of the Des Moines River from its 
mouth to the Raccoon Fork (so called), in said Territory”, of “one equal 
moiety, in alternate sections, of the public lands (remaining unsold, and 
not otherwise disposed of, encumbered, or appropriated), in a strip five 
miles in width on each side of said river, to be selected within said Terri- 
tory by an agent or agents to be appointed by the governor thereof, sub- 
22 AR 
