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some clear and unequivocal declaration, or certain and immemorial usage, to limit the title of the owner, in such cases, to the edge of the river. Where a stream is used in a grant as a boundary or monument, it is used as an entirety to the center of it, and, to that extent, the fee passes. If a fresh water river, running between the lands of separate owners, insensibly gains on one side or the other, the title of each continues to go ad filum medium aquæ. This is the general doctrine as to alluvians. If soil be formed by islands, or relicted land out of the sea or a river, by slow and imperceptible accretion, it belongs, in the case of the sea or navigable rivers, to the sovereign; and in cases of rivers not navigable in the common law sense of the term, or above where the sea ebbs and flows, it belongs to the owners of the adjoining lands."

And this has been the recognized rule of a very large majority of the American States, touching almost every important river of the continent, and embracing nearly every State bordering on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, including Virginia.

As this was a Virginia patent, issued before the separation of Kentucky from her, the rights of the patentee vested under the laws of Virginia, and are protected by the compact between her and her daughter, Kentucky; and to deprive him or his vendees of any rights acquired by her patent, or to circumscribe the boundaries within narrower compass than did her laws, is a violation in spirit and letter of said compact, which is now made of constitutional sanction and sacredness, and which expressly provides (sec. 7), that all private rights and interest of lands derived from the laws of Virginia prior to such separation shall remain valid and secure, and be determined by the Virginia laws.

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MAINE. Morrison vs. Keen, 3 Greenl., 474; Brown vs. Chadbourne, 31 Maine, 9.

MASSACHUSETTS.-Storer vs. Freeman, 6 Mass., 439; King vs. King, 7 Mass., 496; Lunt vs. Holland, 14 Mass., 149; Hatch vs. Dwight, 17 Mass., 289.

NEW HAMPSHIRE.-Claremont vs. Carleton, 2 N. H., 369; Greenleaf vs. Ketton, 11 N. H., 531.

CONNECTICUT.-Adams vs. Pease, 2 Conn., 483; Warner vs. Southworth, 6 Conn., 471.

NEW YORK.-3 Caine's, 307; 17 Johnson, 195; 20 Johnson, 90; 6 Cowen, 518; 5 Paige, 137-547; 5 Wend., 447; 13 Wend., 358; 17 Wend., 571; 20 Wend., 111; 22 Wend., 425; 26 Wend., 404, and others.

NEW JERSEY.-1 Halstead, 1; 3 Zabriskie, 624.

MARYLAND.-Brown vs. Kenady, 5 Ham. & J., 195. VIRGINIA.-Hays' ex'r vs. Bowman, 1 Rand., 417; also, 3 Rand., 33.

NORTH CAROLINA.-Hammond vs. McGlaughlin, Taylor's Rep., 84.

ALABAMA.-Hagan et ux. vs. Campbell, 8 Por., 9.

GEORGIA. Young et ux. vs. Harrison et ux., 6 Geo., 141; Jones vs. Water Lot Co., Columbus, 18 Geo., 539.

MISSISSIPPI.-Morgan et ux. vs. Reading, 3 Smedes & M.,

366.

LOUISIANA.-Morgan vs. Livingston, 6 Mar., 216; Municipality No. 2 vs. Cotton Press, 18 La. R., 122; same, 278. TENNESSEE.-Stuart vs. Clark's less., 3 Swan, 9; Overruling Elder vs. Benson, 6 Hemp., 358.

ILLINOIS.-Middleton vs. Pritchard, 3 Scam., 510.

WISCONSIN.-Jones vs. Pettibone, 2 Wis. R., 308. OHIO.-Young vs. McEntire, 3 Ohio, 495; 11 Ohio, 138; 16 Ohio, 540.

Also, including the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States (Handley's lessee vs. Anthony et al., 5

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Wheat., 374.), in which it decided that Virginia had ceded all the land from the Ohio river at ordinary low water on its north, and that the accretions on the north bank in Indiana belonged to her jurisdiction, and were subject to her laws.

And in Jones vs. Soulard, decided by the supreme court, December, 1860 (sce 24 How., 63.), it appeared that St. Louis, Missouri, was incorporated in 1809, by an order of the common pleas court for the district of Louisiana, the eastern boundary being from the last call on the river; "thence by the Mississippi to the place first mentioned,” the beginning being on the river. That June 13, 1812, Congress confirmed the titles of the inhabitants of out lots, village lots, &c., which were to be surveyed; and enacted also that all town or village lots, out lots, or common field lots, included in such survey, which do not rightfully belong to individuals, nor held as commons, or such as shall be reserved by the President of the United States for military purposes, are reserved for the support of schools as aforesaid.

In 1812, there was a naked sand-bar in the river, near the town, which was then surrounded on all sides by fresh water-navigable, in fact, for the crafts usually navigating the river, and was covered by ordinary high water, when the river was within its banks; that it continued so, and unfit for cultivation, until after Missouri was admitted into the Union; that it was part of an island, known as Duncan's, which was formed by said sand-bar, after the admission of the State; and that they were always west of the main channel of the river; and if the boundary is to be construed as extending to the middle of the main channel, are within township forty-five north, range seven east, of the fifth principal meridian, and within the assignment to the

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schools and out-boundary directed to be run by the act of 1812, if said boundary is also to be construed as extending to the middle of the main channel; that it was also within Duncan's pre-emption entry; and that, by subsequent acts, it had been surveyed and reported as the northern half of United States survey four hundred and four, of the St. Louis series of school lands, in 1836, and reported as being within the city of St. Louis as it stood incorporated in 1812; and it was included in the city block eight hundred and seventy-three.

In 1831, Congress had relinquished to the State the title to all lots reserved for school purposes, to be sold and controlled for such purposes by it.

In 1833, the State Legislature created a school corporation, and vested in it the title and control of these lots and lands, and Soulard held their title as vendee.

Jones, as vendee of Duncan, claimed

1. Under an entry made by Robt. Duncan, in 1835, including the sand-bar, but which had been canceled by the Commissioner of the General Land Office as illegal.

2. Under an act of the State Legislature of 1851, transferring the title of Duncan's island, including this sand-bar, to the city of St. Louis, which title he held as its vendee.

This land, upon which St. Louis was originally laid out, belonged to the United States, consequently, the direct and immediate and controlling question was, whether the title of the government extended to the middle of the main channel, and was embraced in the river boundary of the town as originally described, and whether this accretion became an out-lot of the town, reserved for school purposes, and the title to which passed, by the Congressional act of 1831, to the State

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for school purposes, and was vested in the school corporation created by the State enactment of 1833, and passed by this corporation to Soulard; or whether it was to be governed by the common law rules applicable to tide-water and navigable rivers, and the title to the lands below high water line, presumed to be reserved by the sovereign; and, if so, the United States, not having parted with the title until Missouri became a State of the Union, the title thereto vested in her as the sovereign, and passed to the city by her enactment of 1851, and was vested in Duncan as her vendee, and passed by his deed to Jones.

In reference to whether grants of land, bounded by fresh water rivers, where the expressions designating the water-line are general, confer the proprietorship on the grantee to the middle thread of the stream and entitle him to the accretions, the court said:

"We think this, as a general rule, too well settled as part of the American and English law of real property, to be open to discussion; and the inquiry here is, whether the rule applies to so great and public a water-course as the Mississippi is, at the city of St. Louis? The land grant to which the accretion attached has nothing peculiar in it to form an exemption from the rule; it is an irregular piece of land of seventy-nine acres, found vacant by the Surveyor General, and surveyed by him as a school lot, in conformity to the act of 1812."

"The doctrine that, on our rivers, where the tide ebbs and flows, grants of land are bounded by ordinary high water mark, has no application in this case, nor does the size of the river alter the rule. To hold that it did, would be a dangerous tampering with riparian rights, involving litigation concerning the size of rivers as matter of fact, rather than proceeding on established principles of law.”