and reported to the Governor, on the 17th of December, 1847. The title to the lands thus selected by the terms of the grant, became vested in the State.
The Board of Public Works having charge of the improvement of the navigation of the river, being in doubt as to the extent of the grant, applied to the Commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington to learn how far north the grant extended. On the 23d of January, 1848, the Commissioner replied in these words:
“The State of Iowa is entitled to the alternate sections within five miles of the Des Moines River throughout the whole extent of that river within the limits of Iowa.”
As the grant was made while Iowa was a Territory, when its northern boundary was many miles farther north than it was when admitted as a State, there was still some doubt as to the extent of the grant. To settle this doubt our members of Congress on the 8th of January, 1848, addressed a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury, who then had jurisdiction over the public lands, to procure an official decision as to the northern limit of the grant. Secretary Robert J. Walker, on the 2d of March, 1849, wrote as follows:
“I am of the opinion that the grant in question extends on both sides of the river from its source to its mouth but not to the lands on the river in the State of Missouri.”
This decision placed the northern limit of the grant much further north than the northern boundary of the State. The Commissioner of the General Land Office, under this ruling, June 1, 1849, directed the local land officers to reserve from sale all the lands included in the grant, according to that construction. The amount of land thus reserved, was estimated to be about 900,000 acres. On the 6th of April, 1850, Thomas Ewing, then Secretary of the Interior, gave his opinion that the grant
