CONSTITUTION 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 
grants made by Mexico previous to 1846. 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 office, 
and without such record they are not valid as against persons 
not parties to the conveyance. 
16* 
