CO NTS TIT UT I ON AND LAWS. 353 



it has been surveyed, and, with the exception of the land in the 

 mineral districts, is offered for sale at one dollar and twenty- 

 five cents cash per acre, in lots of forty acres, or tracts of any 

 size of which forty is a multiple. There is no limit to the 

 amount which one man may buy. Any man may occupy any 

 of the federal land. It is open to the use of the public. The 

 tule land, of which there are about eight hundred square 

 miles, belongs to the state, and that is offered for sale at one 

 dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, but the payment may be 

 made in instalments at long intervals. One-eighteenth of the 

 land has been given to the state for school purposes, and this 

 is also for sale at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre 

 in instalments. 



Most of the land held in private ownership in the state, is under 

 grams made by Mexico previous to 1 846. Of these grants there 

 are eight hundred and thirteen, covering a total of 9,828,181 

 acres. Of these claims about one hundred and fifty, covering 

 about 3,000,000 acres, have been finally rejected, and a number 

 are as yet undecided. The grants were for large tracts called 

 ranchos, intended to be used chiefly or exclusively for pastur- 

 age, and the average size was about 12,000 acres, or three 

 square leagues. The grants were made, not by the acre or by 

 the mile, but by the square league, containing 4,438 acres and 

 a fraction, or, to be precise, 4,438.683 acres. Every ranch had 

 its name, for it was a kind of principality, and these names 

 have in many cases been transferred to towns and townships 

 under the American dominion. 



The common tenure of land in California is fee-simple. Such 

 conditional tenures as are common in Europe are very rare 

 here, and many of them are prohibited by our laws. We 

 have no life estates, nor is any lease or limited conveyance of 

 land good for a longer period than ten years, unless it be a 

 town lot, and then the limit is twenty years. All conveyances 

 of real estate are placed upon record in a government ofiice, 

 and without such record they are not valid as against persons 

 not parties to the conveyance. 



