and if, in the exercise of this power, the whole or any part of a sixteenth or thirty-sixth section had been disposed of, the state was to be compensated by other lands equal in quantity, and as near as may be in quality. * * * “Congress said to the people of the territory: ‘You shall, if you decide to come into the Union, have for the use of schools a quantity of land equal to two sections in each township, and the identical sections themselves, if on survey no one else has any claim to them.’” Heydenfeldt v. Mining Co., 93 U. 8. 634. In Hedrick v. Hughes, 15 Walk 123, a similar grant received a similar construction. In Minneapolis & St. C. R. Co. v. Duluth & W. R. Co., 47 N. W. Rep. 464, the supreme court of Minnesota held a grant of “an amount of swamp lands equal to ten sections per mile for each mile of said road that may be completed, to be selected within ten miles on each side of said road, and, in case there is not sufficient amount of said swamp lands unsold or unappropriated within each ten-mile section of said road as completed, then said company shall have the privilege of locating the deficiency on any of the swamp lands belonging to or to accrue to the state, not otherwise previously disposed of, within the counties of St. Louis, Lake, and Cook, and no other counties in the state,” to be a grant of quantity if that quantity could be obtained within these limits, and to vest title to the lands to be selected outside the ten-mile limits, upon their. identification, equally with those within those limits. In Railway Co. v. Brown, 24 Minn. 517, a similar construction was placed upon another grant analogous to that of plaintiff in its provisions.
As we have seen, when the line of the road is definitely located, and a plat thereof filed in the office of the commissioner of the general land office, the grant, previously a float, acquired precision. The sections within the forty-mile or place limits become susceptible of identification. The idemnity limits themselves are defined. The number of acres required to satisfy the grant, and which are to be taken within the indemnity limits, is fixed; and the grant, previously a float, both as to exact quantity and location, becomes a specific quantity to be taken within adefined limit. As said by the supreme court: “When the line was fixed, which we have already said was by the filing of
