Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/383

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NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD CO. v. BARNES.
357

claim or rigifts at the time the plat of the definite location of the road is filed with the commissioner of the general land office, is identified by fixing the line as granted. The language of the indemnity provision confirms this construction. “And whenever, prior to said time, any of said sections or parts of sections shall have been granted, sold, etc., other lands shall be selected, not more than ten miles beyond the limits of said alternate sections””—is intelligible only upon the theory that a lateral limit is to be understood. “Any of said sections or parts of sections” necessarily refers to the sections within the limits of twenty alternate sections, or forty miles on each side of the road; and the provision that the indemnity shall be selected “not more than ten miles beyond the limits of said alternate sections” plainly means that such selections must be made not more than ten miles beyond the forty-mile limit, or not more than forty, and within fifty miles of the road. It is within this indemnity belt that the lands described in the complaint are located. When and in what manner is the title to land within the indemnity belt acquired? The granting terms of the act are such as, standing alone, would make a grant of quantity. U.S. v. Railroad Co., 98 U. S. 334. They are of “lands to the amount of twenty alternate sections per mile.” In this respect this grant differs radically from most railroad land grants, which are of “every alternate section per mile designated by odd nambers for six [or ten] sections in width, on each side of said road.” But the granting terms are somewhat restrained aud modified by the indemnity provisions. By these provisions, as contained in the original act, the limit in which the quantity granted must be satisfied, if at all, is restricted to the belt inclosed within the fifteen-mile limits on each side of the line. And the terms of the act giving the right to select indemnity for such lands as had been granted, sold, reserved, occupied by homestead settlers, or pre-empted, or otherwise disposed of, by implication forbids the taking of indemnity for a deficiency in quantity arising from other causes, if any there are. Expressio unius est exclusio alterious. The indemnity provision is broad enough to include all possible modes of disposition of land. But it is not intended to supply a deficiency in the quantity granted of forty sections