THE STORY OF OUR PUBLIC DOMAIN 49 



the United States Treasury, and other beneficiaries 

 designated by law." 



Naturally the General Land Office records are 

 a library of interesting and important facts concern- 

 ing the country as a whole as well as of its parts. 

 Who would have thought, for example, that origi- 

 nally the United States contained 125,000,000 acres, 

 or nearly 200,000 square miles of swamps, an area 

 as large as Germany or France, and three times as 

 large as New England? 



"These wet lands were of two kinds," wrote 

 Palmer in 1915, "tide water or delta-overflowed 

 lands, and glacial swamps. Those of the first class 

 extended from Virginia to Texas. In Florida there 

 were about 19,800,000 acres; in Louisiana 10,316,- 

 ooo acres ; in Mississippi 5,760,200 acres ; in Arkan- 

 sas, 5,911,300 acres; and in North Carolina, South 

 Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and Texas, 3,122,000 

 to 1,500,000 acres each. These lands include such 

 swamps as there are along the lower course of the 

 Mississippi River ; the Jersey marshes and the Dis- 

 mal Swamp of North Carolina and Virginia. The 

 wet lands of the second class, that is, the glacial 

 swamps, were most extensive in Minnesota, which 

 had 7,332,308 acres; Michigan 4,547,439 acres; Il- 

 linois, 4,421,000; and Wisconsin 2,560,000. 



"Because of the abundance of drier and better 

 lands even in the eastern part of the United States, 

 it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century 

 that these wet lands received any attention from 



