Supreme court of the United States. No. 135. The United States, appellants, vs. John A. Sutter. Appeal from the District court U.S. for the Northern district of California.

126 The United States vs. Sutter.
the latter may be rejected or controlled by other material
161 calls which are consistent and certain; course and distance
yield to visible known and definite objects, but they do not
yield unless to calls more material and equally certain."-(2 Wheat.,.
316.)
"When the different parts of a description of the metes and
bounds are repugnant and contradictory to each other, such parts may
be rejected and such retained as will leave enough plainly and
clearly to designate the land intended to be conveyed."-(lst Paine,
496.) In White vs. Engan, 1st Bay., 247, cited in 5th Greenleaf,
434, the land was considered as bounded north on Sir John Colldon,
and south on Coxe; whereas, in fact, it was bounded south on Colliton, and north on Coxe. Parol testimony was admitted to correct the
mistake. Here was a latent ambiguity, description and fact not agreeing. There is no question that where the course and the monument
disagree the monument is to govern.-(Ibid., and 3d Greenleaf, 71.,
In the last cited case the court lay down the rule to be, what is more
certain must prevail over that which is less certain; or, in other
words, where the length or course of a descriptive line will not agree
with a known and fixed monument, which is named in the deed, the
inaccuracy of the line must give way to the certainty and trust of the
monument. The court accordingly decided that where a line by a
particular course was given to include a certain farm of A, and the
course would not include the farm, the line must be changed without
regard to the course called for, so as to embrace it, and they give as
the reason of this decision that the farm is a well known and immovable monument, to which the mathematical line must yield.
Authorities on this point might be multiplied almost ad finitum, but
those adduced are sufficient to show that the position of the agent of
the government in relation to cannot be sustained. The circumstances surrounding the parties at the time the grant was made, the
language both of the petition for the grant and the grant itself, show
conclusively the true intent and meaning of the instrument. Capt.
Sutter had, some three years before, with the sancetion of the government, settled himself at a point near the junction of the American
and Sacramento rivers, and had, at great expense and labor, built up
an extensive settlement in that locality, which, in honor of the
162 land of his nativity, he named New Helvetia. It is natural
to suppose that he would be desirous of indemnifying himself
for his trouble and expense, and of obtaining the means of remunerating the settlers whom he had induced to join with him in the enterprise, by receiving a title to the lands whose value had been thus
enhanced by their common efforts, and on which their settlements
were established. It was the point where he had erected his fortifications to protect his settlers from the depredations of the hostile
tribes, where he had constructed houses for their habitation, and had
enclosed and reduced to profitable cultivation extensive fields for
their common subsistence. To suppose that Capt. Sutter in selecting, and the governor in granting, the land should have intended to
exclude that portion on which all his labor and money had been ex