gues, had been made to settlers by the Mexican government. Only
small tracts were subjected to cultivation. The greater part of the
land was used for grazing cattle, which were kept in immense herds.
The grants were sometimes of tracts with defined boundaries, and
sometimes of places by name, but more frequently of specified
quantities within boundaries embracing a greater amount. By the
Mexican law, it was incumbent upon the magistrates of the vicinage to
put the grantees in possession of the land granted to them; and for
that purpose to measure off and segregate the quantity designated.
Owing to the sparseness of the population there was little danger
of dispute as to boundaries, and this segregation in the majority of
cases had been neglected before our acquisition of the country. From
the size of the grants and the want of definite boundaries, arose
nearly all the difficulties and complaints of the early settlers. Upon
the discovery of gold, immigrants from all parts of the world rushed
into the country, increasing the population in one or two years from a
few thousand to several hundred thousand. A large number crossed the
plains from the Western States, and many of them sought for farming
lands upon which to settle. To them a grant of land, leagues in extent,
seemed a monstrous wrong to which they could not be reconciled. The
vagueness, also, in many instances, of the boundaries of the land
claimed gave force and apparent reason to their objections. They
accordingly settled upon what they found unenclosed or uncultivated,
without much regard to the claims of the Mexican grantees. If the land
upon which they thus settled was within the tracts formerly occupied
by the grantees with their herds, they denied the validity of grants
so large in extent. If the boundaries designated enclosed a greater
amount than that specified in the grants, they undertook to locate the
supposed surplus. Thus, if a grant were of three leagues within
boundaries embracing four, the immigrant would undertake to appropriate
to himself a portion of what he deemed the surplus; forgetting that
other immigrants might do the same thing, each claiming that what he
had taken was a portion of such surplus, until the grantee was deprived
of his entire property.

When I was brought to consider the questions to which this condition
of things gave rise, I assumed at the outset that the obligations of
the treaty with Mexico were to be respected and enfor