ALASKA. 
101 
11. By the foregoing it will be perceived that no lode-claim located after the 
10th May, 1872, can exceed a parallelogram fifteen hundred feet in length by 
six hundred feet in width, but whether surface-ground of that width can be taken, 
depends upon the local regulations or State or Territorial laws in force in the 
several mining districts; and that no such local regulations or State or Territo¬ 
rial laws shall limit a vein or lode claim to less than fifteen hundred feet along 
the course thereof, whether the location is made by one or more persons, nor 
can surface rights be limited to less than fifty feet in width, unless adverse claims 
existing on the 10th day of May, 1872, render such lateral limitation necessary. 
12. It is provided by the Revised Statutes that the miners of each district 
may make rules and regulations not in conflict with the laws of the Hnited 
States, or of the State or Territory in which such districts are respectively sit¬ 
uated, governing the location, manner of recording, and amount of work neces¬ 
sary to hold possession of a claim. They likewise require that the location 
shall be so distinctly marked on the ground that its boundaries may be readily 
traced. This is a very important matter, and locators cannot exercise too much 
care in defining their locations at the outset, inasmuch as the law requires that 
all records of mining locations made subsequent to May 10, 1872, shall contain 
the name or names of the locators, the date of the location, and such a descrip¬ 
tion of the claim or claims located, by reference to some natural object or 
permanent monument, as will identify the claim. 
l.? The statutes provide that no lode-claim shall be recorded until after the 
discovery of a vein or lode within the limits of the claim located, the object of 
which provision is evidently to prevent the appropriation of presumed mineral 
ground for speculative purposes to the exclusion of bonafde prospectors, before 
sufficient woik has been done to determine whether a vein or lode really exists. 
14. The claimant should, therefore, prior to locating his claim, unless the 
vein can be traced upon the surface, sink a shaft, or run a tunnel or drift, to a 
sufficient depth therein to discover and develop a mineral-bearing vein, lode, or 
crevice; should determine, if possible, the general course of such vein in either 
direction from the point of discovery, by which direction he will be governed in 
marking the boundaries of his claim on the surface. His location notice should 
give the course and distance as nearly as practicable from the discovery-shaft on 
the claim, to some permanent, well-known points or objects, such, for instance, 
as stone monuments, blazed trees, the confluence of streams, point of intersec¬ 
tion of well-known gulches, ravines, or roads, prominent buttes, hills, etc 
which may be in the immediate vicinity, and which will serve to perpetuate and 
fix the locus of the claim and render it susceptible of identification from the 
description thereof given in the record of locations in the district, and s ou 
be duly recorded. 
