Opinion of the Court. an undivided half to the other two appellees; and in the same year they brought this action of boundary. In support of the decree of the court below, it is urged by counsel for appellees that "there is nothing in the patents or title on record to show, by word or otherwise, any distinct calls, designating their location; nothing given descriptive of the property, except the township, the section and the range; nothing to describe the lands patented or conveyed, either as high lands, swamp or overflowed lands, or as having upon them any water course or bayou." He admits, however, that the plat in evidence contains upon its face the names of certain bayous, as "Bayou Cailliou," "Grassy," "Salé," and others; but says "that the original patents and conveyances, apart from the plat, are silent upon the subject, except that the defendant's title calls for land on Bayou Grand Cailliou." In this view, which seems to be the one on which the court below must have acted, the learned counsel is mistaken. It is a well settled principle that when lands are granted according to an official plat of the survey of such lands, the plat itself, with all its notes, lines, descriptions and landmarks, becomes as much a part of the grant or deed by which they are conveyed, and controls so far as limits are concerned, as if such descriptive features were written out upon the face of the deed or the grant itself. The patent of the State of Louisiana to Wolf was of the east half of southeast quarter of section 10, east half of east half of section 15, etc., "containing 635,5 acres tidal overflow according to the official plat of the survey of said lands in the state land office." By that plat the portions of the sections patented to Wolf were noted as tidal overflow; and as such they had been certified to the State by the General Land Office and the Interior Department. By the same plat Bayou Four Points was noted as running through those portions of sections 10, 15 and 22, which had been patented to Bach, who doubtless entered them, and obtained patents for them, because of the high lands so noted on this bayou. Equally unsound is the contention on behalf of the appellees that "the land was sold and patented not as pointing to any Opinion of the Court. bayou, nor with reference to the character of the land, whether as swamp or high land." The statutes of the United States make it the duty of the surveyor general to note "all water courses over which the line he runs may pass; and also the quality of the lands." Rev. Stat. § 2395, subdiv. 7. And they provide that a copy of the plat of survey shall be kept for public information in the office of the surveyor general, in the offices where the lands are to be sold, and also in the office of the Commissioner of Public Lands. They further provide that "the boundary lines actually run and marked in the surveys returned by the surveyor general shall be established as the proper boundary lines of the sections or subdivisions for which they were intended, and the length of such lines, as returned, shall be held and considered as the true length thereof." Rev. Stat. § 2396, subdiv. 2. The surveyor, McLeran, insists not only in his original report of his survey, but also in his second explanatory report, and in his oral evidence, that this governmental survey is incorrect; some of it more incorrect than the rest, but especially erroneous in the length of its lines and in the location of Bayou Four Points on the portions of the sections patented to the appellees. The plat, he reports, is totally inconsistent with that of the governmental survey, and should have been rejected by the court below. Whether the official survey made by Connelly is erroneous, or should give way to the extent of its discrepancies to the survey reported by McLeran, is a question which was not within the province of the court below, nor is it the province of this court to consider and determine. The mistakes and abuses which have crept into the official surveys of the public domain form a fruitful theme of complaint in the political branches of the government. The correction of these mistakes and abuses has not been delegated to the judiciary, except as provided by the act of June 14, 1860, 12 Stat. 33, c. 128, in relation to Mexican Land claims, which was repealed in 1864, 13 Stat. 332, c. 194, § 8. From the earliest. days matters appertaining to the survey of public or private lands have devolved upon the Commissioner of the General Opinion of the Court. Land Office, under the supervision of the Secretary of the Interior. Rev. Stat. § 453. The Commissioner, in the exercise of his superintendence over surveyors general, and of all subordinate officers of his bureau, is clothed with large powers of control to prevent the consequences of inadvertence, mistakes, irregularity and fraud in their operations. Rev. Stat. 8 2478; Bell v. Hearne, 19 How. 252 and 262. Under the authority of specific appropriations by Congress, for that purpose, the resurveys of public lands have become an extensive branch of the business of the General Land Office. In 1848 the surveyor general of Louisiana urgently recommended a resurvey of certain townships in the district of Louisiana, and of all lands fronting on Bayou Cailliou, in Terre Bonne, which had been surveyed by F. G. Connelly and other named surveyors. It was in accordance with this recommendation that Gorlinski made the resurveys above referred to. But the Commissioner of the General Land Office very soon put an end to this system of resurveys, and in a letter to the surveyor general, which throws no little light upon the subject, he says: "The making of resurveys or corrective surveys of townships once proclaimed for sale is always at the hazard of interfering with private rights, and thereby introducing new complications. A resurvey, properly considered, is but a retracing, with a view to determine and establish lines and boundaries of an original survey, but the principle of retracing has been frequently departed from, where a resurvey (so called) has been made and new lines and boundaries have often been introduced, mischievously conflicting with the old, and thereby affecting the areas of tracts which the United States had previously sold and otherwise disposed of." It will be perceived that McLeran's survey not only disregards the old original survey making new lines and boundaries, but does so in contravention of the order from the Land Office that those resurveys should not be extended into this township. That the power to make and correct surveys of the public lands belongs to the political department of the government Opinion of the Court. and that, whilst the lands are subject to the supervision of the General Land Office, the decisions of that bureau in all such cases, like that of other special tribunals upon matters within their exclusive jurisdiction, are unassailable by the courts, except by a direct proceeding; and that the latter have no concurrent or original power to make similar corrections, if not an elementary principle of our land law, is settled by such a mass of decisions of this court that its mere statement is sufficient. Steel v. Smelting Co., 106 U. S. 447, 454-5, and cases cited in that opinion; United States v. San Jacinto Tin Co., 10 Sawyer, 639, affirmed in 125 U. S. 273; United States v. Flint, 4 Sawyer, 42, affirmed in United States v. Throckmorton, 98 U. S. 61; Henshaw v. Bissell, 18 Wall. 255; Stanford v. Taylor, 18 How. 409; Haydel v. Dufresne, 17. How. 23; West v. Cochran, 18 How. 403; Jackson v. Clark, 1 Pet. 628; Niswanger v. Saunders, 1 Wall. 424; Snyder v. Sickles, 98 U. S. 203; Frasher v. O'Connor, 115 U. S. 102; Gazzam v. Phillips, 20 How. 372; Pollard v. Dwight, 4 Cranch, 421; Taylor v. Brown, 5 Cranch, 234; McIver v. Walker, 9 Cranch, 173, 177; Craig v. Radford, 3 Wheat. 594; and Ellicott v. Pearl, 10 Pet. 412. The reason of this rule, as stated by Justice Catron in the case of Haydel v. Dufresne, is that "great confusion and litigation would ensue if the judicial tribunals, state and federal, were permitted to interfere and overthrow the public surveys on no other ground than an opinion that they could have the work in the field better done and divisions more equitably made than the department of public lands could do." 17 How. 30. It is conceded that this power of supervision and correction by the Commissioner of the General Land Office is subject to necessary and decided limitations. Nor is it denied that, when the Land Department has once made and approved a governmental survey of public lands, (the plats, maps, field notes and certificates all having been filed in the proper office,) and has sold or disposed of such lands, the courts have power to protect the private rights of a party who has purchased, in good faith, from the government against the interferences or Opinion of the Court. appropriations of corrective resurveys made by that department subsequently to such disposition or sale. But there is nothing in the circumstances of this case which brings it within any such limitations. The appellee, Powell, is a surveyor, who, in the year 1877, while employed by appellant to make a survey of his plantation, thought he discovered an error in the public lands, whereby it would appear that his lands were not in fact situated on Bayou Four Points. From his own evidence it is shown that he induced Wolf to obtain the patent from the State of Louisiana for the land which he, the said appellee, purchased from him. When he purchased this land from Wolf he knew that the tracts to which he was laying claim had been possessed and cultivated by the appellant for a long. period of years. An advantage thus obtained, a court of equity will not readily enforce. As was said in Taylor v. Brown, 5 Cranch, 234, 256: "The terms of the subsequent location prove that the locator considered himself as comprehending Taylor's previous entry within his location. He either did not mean to acquire the land within Taylor's entry, or he is to be considered as a man watching for the accidental mistakes of others, and preparing to take advantage of them. What is gained at law by a person of this description, equity will not take from him; but it does not follow that equity will aid his views." For the reasons above stated, the decree of the Circuit Court is reversed, with directions to dismiss the petition of the plaintiff's below at their costs. |