RAILROAD LAND GRANTS. 93 



Shreveport 318 miles in all. It was not finished within the 

 limit of five years set by the terms of the act. It was not even 

 begun. 



Not a spadeful of earth was ever turned, not a tic cut, nor a 

 rail nor a spike purchased. The railroad never earned its land 

 grant. It never had existence except on the map filed in the 

 Interior Department at Washington. The corporation itself is 

 a defunct concern ; its charter has been declared forfeited by 

 the Legislature of Louisiana, which created it. 



Just two years ago that is to say, in the first week of Janu- 

 ary, 1881 there was achieved in a little oflSce in lower Broad- 

 way, in New York City, one of the most remarkable transactions 

 in real estate of which there is any record. The directors of 

 this extinct company, representing a railroad which never ex- 

 isted, sold for one dollar a million and a half acres of govern- 

 ment land which it never owned. The purchaser was the ,New 

 Orleans Pacific Railway Company, now consolidated with the 

 Texas & Pacific. 



" To the ordinary intellect this will seem likejpurchasing a lost 

 opportunity from the ghost of an imaginary person. ) Yet it is 

 on the strength of that amazing transfer that $3,000,000 worth 

 of the public domain will be signed away, perhaps next month, 

 perhaps next week, unless Congress blocks the game. 



" On January 5, 1881, the President of the Backbone Compa- 

 ny executed the deed of transfer, and the price stipulated is one 

 dollar. But one dollar was by no means the real consideration. 



" The true basis of the sale was a secret agreement that the 

 New Orleans Pacific should issue land grant bonds for the lands 

 to be acquired from the government, and that of these bonds 

 the New Orleans Pacific should retain two thirds, the other third 

 going to the ghost of the old company. This agreement was 

 put in the form of an obligation, signed by the President of the 

 New Orleans Pacific, to transfer to the President of the New 

 Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Vicksburg one third of the land 

 grant bonds. The document is now held by a trust company in 

 New York. 



" There was still another stipulation, and a very important 



