tax of 1886. It is axiomatio that no tax can be laid, under a statute which requires a tax to be laid upon the value, until the value is officially ascertained and declared substantially in the manner the law points out. In other words under our general revenue system there can be no tax upon any piece of land until it is assessed and valued officially, and in substantial compliance with the requirements of the statute which regulates assessments. The process of assessment as it relates to realty is pointed out by statute and is briefly as follows; First, the land must be described by separate tracts in lists furnished for the use of the assessor; second, the assessor must view the land and reach a conclusion in his own mind as to its value; third, the assessor is required to write out opposite each tract in the roll the value as he ascertained it to be, and, finally, the assessor is required to swear to the assessment thus made, and annex the proper affidavit to the roll, and then return it to the county clerk or auditor. It is obvious that the whole of this process depends vitally upon the primary act of describing the land. Without description in writing followed by a valuation stated in writing there can be no assessment of land under the law; and, as before stated there can be no tax without a valid assessment. There can be no such thing as a parol assessment of land. The law requires a definite record, and no other evidence of the assessment is competent. Sections 4, 5, c. 28, Pol. Code, (Comp. Laws, § 1544 et seq.); Welty, Assessm. § 4; Black, Tax Titles, § 27. The city tax was held void by this court on the ground of an invalid assessment in Farrington v. Investment Co., 1 N. D. 102, 45 N. W. Rep. 191. See, also, Cooley, Tax’n. 339; Burroughs, Tax’n, 211.
The record also discloses another irregularity in the tax proceedings in question, which, in our opinion, is jurisdictional, and fatal to all of the alleged taxes. It appears that the board of equalization for Barnes county did not, as the law requires, in either of said years assemble on the first Monday in July, nor upon the following day. Whether it assumed to assemble at all in those years is wholly immaterial. Failing to meet at the time designated or upon the following day—a two-day session being prescribed by statute—the county board were with-
