We Must Deal
With Such Things According To Their Nature.
Towns do not spring into
existence consummate and complete.
Nor do they commence with eight
houses, systematically distributed, each in the centre of a forty-acre
lot. And in the case of a town settlement of three hundred and twenty
acres; as well as that of a farm site of one hundred and sixty acres,
all which can be lawfully requisite to communicate to the occupants
the right of preemption to the block of land, including every one of
its quarter quarter-sections, is improvement, or indication of the
improvement of the entire block, acts of possession or use regarding
it, consonant with the nature of the thing. That, in a farm, will be
the erection of a house and outhouses, cultivation, and use of
pasturage or woodland: in a town, it will be erecting houses or shops,
platting out the land, grading or opening streets, and the like signs
and marks of occupation or special destination.
The same considerations lead to the conclusion that it would not be
just to confine the proofs of occupation to facts existing at its very
incipiency. The inchoate or equitable right, as against all others,
begins from the beginning of the occupation: the ultimate sufficiency
of that occupation is to be determined in part by subsequent facts,
which consummate the occupation, and also demonstrate its bona fides.
If it were otherwise, there would be an end of all the advantage
expressly given by the statute to priority of occupation.
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