1st Session. No. 19. IN SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES. JANUARY 28, 1850. Mr. BORLAND made the following REPORT: [To accompany bill S. No. 3.] The Committee on Public Lands, to whom was referred "A bill (S. 3) to grant to the State of Arkansas the public lands remaining unsold on account of overflow in that State," report: It appears from the records of the General Land Office, that the State of Arkansas comprises an area of 52,198 square miles, or 33,406,478.32 acres. Of this, up to January 1, 1848, 32,154,763.12 acres had been surveyed, and 1,251,715 acres remained unsurveyed. Of the surveyed lands, 29,982,204.70 acres had been proclaimed for sale, 2,875,540.03 acres had been sold, and nearly 6,000,000 acres included in reservations, grants, donations, private land claims, &c., leaving about 24,000,000 acres unsold, and still the property of the United States. Of this latter, or unsold area, now public la 1, 4,807,673 acres, or about one-fifth part of it, is marked on the surveyor's plats, and designated in the books of the land office, as "swamp land-wet and unfit for cultivation." The 1,251,715 acres remaining unsurveyed, by a proportional estimate, will give 250,343 acres of "swamp land," which, added to that already ascertained, will make in round numbers about 5,000,000 acres of that description of land, or rather more than one-seventh part of the whole area of the State. The lands thus indicated as "swamp lands-wet and unfit for cultivation," are, as property, valueless to the United States, and must ever be so if allowed to remain in their present unreclaimed condition. The government will not reclaim them, and individuals cannot; consequently they find no purchasers, and remain a burden, rather than a benefit, to the country; and not a burden merely, but a nuisance of the most hurtful kind. In every aspect in which they can be regarded, they present that character. These lands are found along all the water-courses within and touching the State of Arkansas; and it is alike in their relations with the rivers and the solid ground, that their attendant evils are felt. Almost all of our western rivers have soft, alluvial, sandy bottoms, easily and frequently changing, alternately, into channels and bars, under the action of the current, especially during floods and overflows. They have also soft, alluvial banks, which, when overflowed for any length of time, (as often happens in spring and summer,) become saturated with the water, and, yielding to the combined force of the weight and rapidity of the current, are broken down and swept off. How often are these occurrences witnessed! How disastrous have they not proven, alike to the planters on the bank of the river and to the vessels which navigate it! Not a flood has ever come and gone without changing, in some degree, the channels of the rivers—often in a manner to defy the skill of the most experienced pilots. Not a season has ever passed without despoiling some of the river farms of their fair proportions. These are no trivial events, whether estimated in regard to the amount of property immediately destroyed, or the general detriment they inflict upon the whole business of the country. They unsettle the tenure by which property is possessed, and render uncertain and hazardous the channels of communication with the rest of the world; invading thus the foundation of organized communities, by depriving them of that element—a fixed point of departure, a solid fulcrum for the lever of enterprise and exertion -without which no individual undertaking was ever certainly successful, nor the career of any people ever truly prosperous. No one has resided near these rivers, even within the last five years, without having forced upon his own observation the destruction of very many valuable steamboats, and their still more valuable cargoes, from this cause alone. No one has travelled upon these rivers without seeing innumerable traces of this single cause, in the form of almost impassable sand bars and deposites of timber, where none existed before; in the wrecks of noble steamers; in the mutilated fields; and, in fine plantations literally cut in two, and the channel of the river running where, but a few weeks before, the cotton plant was growing in fruitful luxuriance! These obstructions and hazards of navigation are attended by a greatly increased expense of transportation, as exhibited in enormous freights and excessive rates of insurance. On the Arkansas river, where this cause is at work in its most serious aspect, it is said, on good authority, that not only the charge for freights is enormous, but that the rate of insurance is double that charged upon the eastern rivers, or upon the sea! Nor is this the last of the evil effects of so extensive and potent a cause. The health of the country suffers, as a direct consequence of these overflows, to an extent and degree commensurate with their geographical bound. The miasmatic exhalations from such a surface of turbid waters and wet land, as is thus presented, cannot be contemplated, even in the light of theory, without the saddest forebodings of their pernicious influences; and actual experience has realized even more and worse results than theory ventured to predict. Nor are these noxious vapors limited in their influence to the particular districts (wide as they are) from whose surface they rise; but, under a law of their nature, they rise rapidly from their source, reach a certain elevation, and there, gathering together, they compose an atmosphere of their own; and then, upon the wings of the wind, spread over all the adjacent country, for many miles around. In this way, not only are the extensive overflowed districts made unhealthful, but their baleful influence is visited upon the higher lands by which they are surrounded, and injury is inflicted throughout a circle almost limitless in its sweep. Thus it is seen that the effects of these overflowings of the western rivers are felt, in serious injury, by every interest of the country. Serious obstacles, and, in many instances, impassable barriers, are opposed by them to immigration, and, consequently, to the sale and settlement of the lands within the range of their influence. The land proprietor suffers a depreciation in the value of his freehold; the planter and farmer, in the injury, and, sometimes, total destruction of their crops; the merchant, in the heavy drawbacks upon his trade, in the form of vexatious delays, enormous freights, and double insurance; the navigator, in the uncertainty of his pursuit, and the frequent loss of his vessels; the individual citizen, in that worst of all privations—the loss of health. The authority of the government to execute the proposed work of reclaiming these lands, either directly or by means of intermediate agencies, will hardly be questioned. That such authority, as a general power, attaches to the government, as a land proprietor, will, it is believed, be admitted by all. The propriety of its exercise, within prudent limits, will be as readily admitted; for, without it, the land system could not be administered at all; while with it, by the liberal donation of large quantities, on conditions, the consequent value of the part remaining to the government (even as a matter of pecuniary gain) is made to exceed, often in a ten-fold degree, the prior value of the whole. The instances in which the general government has acted from considerations of this kind, are numerous and well known. They are found in the liberal donations so often granted for purposes of education, and various works of internal improvement in the several States. It is not only the policy of the general government, but it is also its implied and acknowledged duty to dispose of its public lands on some terms, for actual settlement. With regard, however, to its lands which are subject to overflow, this policy cannot be carried out, nor this duty performed, until such lands be first reclaimed. So long as they remain in their present condition, they cannot be sold, cannot be disposed of. In this condition, they are not only profitless to the world, but they are a source of evil to the people in their vicinity, and even a loss to the govemment; scattering fruitful seeds of disease and death in their neighborhood, sending forth miasmatic exhalations to depopulate the country, and lessen the value to the government, as well as to individual proprietors, of the otherwise good lands which border upon them. Their reclamation, therefore, may be regarded, from this point of view, as both national in its bearings and beneficial in its results. It would, certainly, do much to promote the general welfare. In his official report, November 30, 1847, the Commissioner of the General Land Office makes the following suggestions: "That those refuse or unsaleable lands be granted to the States in which they lie, at stated periods of time, after they have remained in market unsold, or when they shall become so far diminished in quantity as not to justify the delay and expense of selling them by the general government. Such a measure would seem to be peculiarly proper at this time, in regard to such swamp and other lands as are, from local causes, unfit for settlement and cultivation in their present condition, in order that such portions of them as may be reclaimed for useful purposes may be made productive and available to such States for the purposes of education, internal improvement, and such other public uses as those States may, in their wisdom, deem best calculated to advance their own peculiar interests.”. -[Senate document No. 2, page 32, 1st session 30th Congress.] Again: The select committee of the Senate, to whom was referred the memorial of the Memphis convention, in their very able and fucid report, June 26, 1846, speak as follows: "Your committee will next proceed to the consideration of that portion of the memorial which relates to the reclaiming, by embankments, the public lands which, in consequence of being subject to inundations, are not fit for cultivation. "The subject is one of no small importance. The Mississippi, like most of the other great rivers, has formed, by its deposites in the long course of years, a tract of great extent and fertility in its approach to the ocean, and which is subject to inundations by its floods. "There are no data by which the extent of this tract can be ascertained with any accuracy. But it is estimated, from the best attainable data by the proper department, to contain about 33,075,000 acres, or 51,670 square miles, lying in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and Illinois. "It is believed by far the greater part may be reclaimed by a proper system of embankment. It is more difficult to estimate, with any precision, what portion of it is still public land. They have not been able to obtain any document that may be relied on as approaching accuracy in that respect, except in reference to that portion of the tract lying in the State of Louisiana. "It appears by a report of the surveyor general of that State, made in October, 1845, that there is of overflowed and swamp land in that State 8,505,505 acres, of which there are subject to private land claims 798,763 acres; granted for schools and other purposes, 378,743; sold prior to the 30th of September of that year, 1,635,458; and unsold or public lands, 5,692,836; making nearly three-quarters of the whole. Assuming the same proportion to remain unsold in the other States, the aggregate amount still belonging to the public would be 24,850,000 acres. "As fertile as this great body of land is, by far the greater portion is at present of little or no value, in consequence of its swampy character and being subject to inundation, and must remain so, alike unprofitable to the public and individuals, so long as they remain in their present condition. But they must remain so until reclaimed by embankments. To meet the expense of making them, the convention recommend the grant of lands or appropriation of money by Congress. "Your committee are of the opinion that something ought to be done towards bringing this great body of fertile land into cultivation. While it remains in its present state, with one, and that the larger portion, held by the United States, another (that granted for schools and other purposes) by the States, and a third by individuals, and these several portions not held in parcels or bodies, separate and distinct from each other, but intermixed one with the other, nothing can well be done towards reclaiming them. It would require the co-operation of the parties interested, each in proportion to the extent of his interest, to accomplish the object. To obtain such co-operation, and fix satisfactorily the amount that each should contribute towards making the necessary embankments, would obviously be a work of too much difficulty and complication to be Since this report was made, the surveyors general of each of the Sta es containing public land have made similar reports. The report from Arkansas in detail up to the 1st day of January, 1848, quoted on the first page of this report, and those from each of the other States in aggregate, up to the 1st day of January, 1849, in one table, are annexed to, and made part of, this ¡eport. |