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.

966 The United States vs. Sutter.
Sacramento and Feather rivers may be confirmed within the limits
of the dotted lines on the diseno, i. e., that they may not
1603 include any part of the tular land excluded from the grant.
The quantity so excluded will be availalle to increase the
lands assigned to Hock Farm without exceeding the 11 leagues to
which Sutter's entire claim has been restricted.
It appears to me that to this the representative of the Hock Farm
tract is entitled.
The U. S. interpose no objection, and tho' the exclusion of the
tulare land in the grant may perhaps have been intended as much
to confer a privilege as to impose a restriction on Sutter, and did
not in all probability refer to the low bottom lands about the fort
and included within the dotted lines, yet, when it is sought to pass
those lines and include tulare lands, and thereby exclude from the
survey the Hock Farm tract which by so emphatic an election and so
ancient and notorious an occupation Sutter has located, it has seemed
to me that the owner of the latter tract has a right to object.
It is also urged that the tract marked on the survey as tract No. 7
may also be excluded, and thus a further quantity be obtained to
satisfy the claims of Hock Farm.
1604 This tract is conveyed by a deed of Sutter, the date of
which, on the theory of location adopted by the court, entitled
the land covered by it be included in the survey. But the deed was
not presented to the court with any idea of asserting a right to have
the land so included. It was obtained from the records and offered
by the U. S. to prove an election by Sutter of lands at the north of the
grant, and to induce the court not to include in the survey the land
adjacent to Sutter's fort.
Since the passage of the act of 1860, abundant opportunity has
been afforded to all persons interested to intervene in the proceeding; no one has appeared to represent this tract or to claim that the
land should be included. It is said to be in great part barren and
unavailable for cultivation.
The counsel of the U. S., by whom the deed was originally presented, offers to withdraw it, or to stipulate that it may be considered as taken off the files.
By adding the quantity of land included in this tract, together
with that excluded as tular lands, from the tracts along the river to
the Hock Farm tract, there will be assigned to the latter about
1605 3,500 acres less than one square league, certainly a very small
portion of the large extent of country notoriously known and
considered the "Hock Farm of Gen'l Sutter." The present owner
of the latter, aware of the extraordinary and almost hopeless difficulties that attend any conceivable mode of settling the location of this
grant, signifies his willingness to accept this arrangement in the
hope of terminating the protracted litigation. The counsel of the U.
S. assents to it, and no party has appeared to oppose it, nor does it
seem that any substantial injury will be done if the tract be, as is
said, larren and without much value. I have therefore, after some
hesitation, determined to accede to the suggestion. That some lands