WINTER MEETING. 255 



in the catalogued places of the moon and stars this system was finally 

 -discarded, and the trigonomical basis adopted. 



The French Jesuits, who made a survey of China for the Emperor 

 about 1730, being the first to discard the astronomical and adopt the 

 trigonomical basis. The record of land surveys in the early settle- 

 ment of this country are very obscure, historians taking up the politi- 

 cal aspect of the country more than the agricultural and economic. I 

 have found more on the subject of war in my researches than any 

 other one branch. While war may have been an important thing in 

 the settlement of a new country, yet its frequent occurrance speaks 

 little for the civilization of the founder of this professedly Christian 

 government. 



And the unnecessary and prolix recital of all the details by the 

 different historians, through whose profuse and wearisome tomes I 

 have toiled in search of the few and meager facts I have been able to 

 find on the subject of land surveys, are tiresome to say the least. 



While war may be a necessary evil, yet land and its survey and 

 proper distribution, to each citizen, is of much greater importance ; for 

 land is the foundation of all prosperity, both national and individual. 

 The fact is, without land, the agricultural interests of the country 

 would be very much at sea. 



The land, in the old original state, was surveyed in grants of 

 almost any shape except squares. 



The Spanish grants, being in many uncouth and odd shapes, the 

 hatchet and cross prevailing, but they mostly bordered on some water- 

 course. 



In Virginia and Kentucky the land was surveyed by individuals, 

 and not by public authority, resulting in much distress and entailing a 

 perfect labyrinth of judicial perplexities, through which it became 

 necessary to pursue the landed property of the country to place it in a 

 state of security. Surely in this case the sins of the fathers were 

 visited on the children. 



The present system of survey of the public lands in this country 

 was inaugurated by Congress in 1785, passing an ordinance for ascer- 

 taining the mode of locating and disposing of land in the western ter- 

 ritories. This ordinance required the surveyor to divide the said ter- 

 ritory into townships of seven miles square by lines running due north 

 and south and others crossing them at right angles. The plats of the 

 townships respectively shall be marked by subdivisions into sections 

 of one mile square, or 640 acres in the same direction, as the external 

 lines, and numbered from 1 to 49, and these sections shall be subdi- 

 vided into lots of 320 acres. This is the first record of the use of the 



