Statement of the Case.

fell within the lands forfeited, which was in accordance with the restoration of July 8, 1885.

Some of the lands claimed to have been forfeited to the United States have been patented and are in the actual occupation of the patentees or persons claiming under them, and other portions of said lands for which patents have been issued are unoccupied and are wild lands, as is true of some of the lands claimed by the United States, which have not been sold or patented, and are not in the actual physical possession of any person or party.

The following is a sufficient reproduction of the diagram:

Argument for Appellees.

The Circuit Court, Bellinger, J., held that the lands within the quadrant were included within the lands forfeited to the government, and decreed accordingly. 57 Fed. Rep. 426. The Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed this decree and directed a decree in favor of the Oregon and California Railroad Company. 29 U. S. App. 497. Thereupon the present appeal was prosecuted.

Mr. Assistant Attorney General Dickinson and Mr. George II. Williams for appellants.

Mr. J. Hubley Ashton and Mr. Joseph II. Choate (with whom were Mr. Charles II. Tweed and Mr. William F. Herrin on the brief), for appellees.

I. The act of May 4, 1870, made a grant in præsenti to the Oregon Central Railroad Company, "and to their successors and assigns," of alternate sections of the public lands to the amount of ten sections per mile "on each side," of the road, providing for indemnity within an additional five miles, or within twenty-five miles "from the track of said road," with the right on the part of the company to locate its road in sections of twenty or more miles, and to construct its road in like sections, and thereupon receive patents for so much of the granted lands as should be "adjacent to and coterminous with the said completed sections." Schulenberg v. Harriman, 21 Wall. 44; Wisconsin Central Railroad v. Price County, 133 U. S. 496; Deseret Sult Co. v. Tarpey, 142 U. S. 241; Bybee v. Oregon & California Railroad, 139 U. S. 663; Lake Superior &c. Co. v. Cunningham, 155 U. S. 354.

II. The Secretary of the Interior, in executing the act of May 4, 1870, construed the act as a grant providing for the construction of one railroad from Portland to Astoria and McMinnville, and providing for the continuity of the line and the corresponding continuity of the grant from Portland to McMinnville, and not as a grant for two different and distinct railroads, one from Portland to Astoria, and the other from a junction point near Forest Grove to McMinnville.

Argument for Appellees.

This original and contemporaneous construction of the granting act by the department charged by law with the execution of the act remained unchanged for fifteen years in that department.

III. Agreeably to the settled doctrine of this court, the contemporaneous construction and effect given by the Department of the Interior to the granting act of May 4, 1870, as above stated, if not decisive, is entitled to very great weight, and should not be disregarded except for some strenuous reasons. United States v. Union Pacific Railway, 148 U. S. 562; United States v. Johnston, 124 U. S. 236; Merritt v. Cameron, 137 U. S. 542; United States v. Alabama Southern Railway, 142 U. S. 621.

The contemporaneous decision of the Secretary of the Interior in and in respect to those matters had by law the force and effect of a final and conclusive adjudication, and was binding as authority upon his successors and upon the Executive Department of the government. The rights of the grantee, in the act, as vested under that determination, could not be impaired or affected except by a proceeding directly taken for that purpose. Noble v. Union River Logging Railroad, 147 U. S. 165; United States v. Bank of the Metropolis, 15 Pet. 377; Kendall v. Stokes, 3 How. 87; Lamborn v. County Commissioners, 97 U. S. 181, 185.

IV. The act of forfeiture of January 31, 1885, must be regarded as a legislative interpretation of the granting act, involving an understanding by Congress that the granting act provided for one railroad and telegraph line, beginning at Portland, and having termini respectively at Astoria and McMinnville.

The language of the forfeiting act of 1885 is as follows: "That so much of the lands granted by an act of Congress entitled 'An act granting land to aid in the construction of a railroad and telegraph line from Portland to Astoria and McMinnville, in the State of Oregon,' approved May 4, 1870, as are adjacent to and coterminous with the uncompleted portions of said road, and not embraced within the limits of said grant for the completed portions of said road, be, and

Argument for Appellees.

the same are hereby, declared to be forfeited to the United States."

It will be perceived that for its description, and its sole description, of the railroad and telegraph line provided for by the granting act, the forfeiting act refers to the title of the granting act, which is recited in the forfeiting act and describes the railroad and telegraph line, contemplated by the granting act, as "a railroad and telegraph line from Portland to Astoria and McMinnville."

Throughout the body of the forfeiting act, the road thus described is referred to only as "said road," showing distinctly. that Congress, when it passed the forfeiting act, understood that the road which the granting act had in view was one road from Portland to Astoria and McMinnville, as expressed in the title of that act.

Congress in 1885 thus affirmed the construction of the granting act upon which the Department of the Interior had proceeded and acted in executing the provisions of that act, and expressed its understanding that such executive construction of the granting act conformed to its intention when it passed that act.

If the effect we have thus attributed to the act of 1885, as a legislative interpretation of the act of 1870, involving an understanding by Congress that the act of 1870 had in view one railroad from Portland to McMinnville, be the correct legal effect of the act of 1885, the question of the construction to be given to the act of 1870 in respect of the point here in controversy, is removed from the region of legal doubt or contestation.

V. The contemporaneous construction of the act of 1870 by the Department of the Interior, in execution of it, and the legislative interpretation of the act by Congress in 1885, were plainly correct. The provisions of the act of 1870 show clearly that Congress intended to make one grant to one company for one railroad and telegraph line "from Portland to Astoria and McMinnville," as expressed in the title of the act, and declared in the act of forfeiture of 1885.

The one railroad described in the act was to run from Port

Argument for Appellees.

land, as its initial point, to Astoria and to the Yamhill River, near McMinnville, and it was to run through a point of junction near Forest Grove; showing that what the act contemplated was a union of the tracks of this one railroad from Portland to Astoria and to the Yamhill River, near McMinnville, at a suitable point of junction near Forest Grove, one line of tracks proceeding to Astoria and another line of tracks proceeding to the Yamhill River, near McMinnville.

The road from Portland was to be bifurcated, so to speak, at a suitable point of junction near Forest Grove, and to run to Astoria and to McMinnville, thus affording communication by railroad from Portland to Astoria and McMinnville.

It is conceded that the maintenance of any other view of the meaning and intent of the act involves and requires the insertion of the words, "a railroad and telegraph line," before the words, "from a suitable point of junction near Forest Grove," etc., in the first section, so as to make the section read: "That for the purpose of aiding in the construction of a railroad and telegraph from Portland to Astoria, and [a railroad and telegraph line] from a suitable point of junction near Forest Grove to the Yamhill River, near McMinnville, in the State of Oregon, there is hereby granted," etc.

But the words referred to cannot be inserted into the statute agreeably to the settled doctrine of this court. Leavenworth, Lawrence &c. Railroad v. United States, 92 U. S. 733; Newhall v. Sanger, 92 U. S. 761, and if it can be said that the words of the statute admit of any reasonable doubt as to their meaning or application, it is clearly proper that the title of the act be considered in determining the intent of Congress, agreeably to the principle so recently stated by this court in the case of Holy Trinity Church v. United States, 143 U. S. 457.

VI. It thus appears that the so-called quadrant lands in question were fully earned by the Oregon Central Railroad Company under the terms of the grant by the completion and acceptance of the second constructed section of its road from the twenty mile post, near Hillsboro, to McMinnville, as lands within the limits of the grant adjacent to and coterminous with that section.