LAW OF WATERCOURSES. CHAPTER I. MEANING OF WATERCOURSE, AND OF THE GENERAL RIGHT OF PROPERTY THEREIN. 1. Meaning of Watercourse. 2. How the Private Right of Property in a Watercourse is derived. 3. How the Private Right of Property in a Watercourse is apportioned between opposite Riparian Owners. 4. When Persons become Riparian Owners. 5. Difference between a Boundary on a Watercourse, and a Boundary on a Pond or Lake. 1. Meaning of Watercourse. § 1. In considering movable and running water in reference to the right of property therein, and as something subservient to rules of jurisprudence, it may be distinguished as tide or inland. With the former the present work has nothing to do, further than to explain, before its conclusion and when it becomes more demanded, the legal distinction between them. § 2. Of bodies of water issuing ex jure naturæ from the earth, and by the same law pursuing a certain direction until they form a confluence with tide-water, there are known in the law two kinds, viz., those in which the proprietary interest is altogether private, and those in which it is both private and public; or those in which the private right of property is subser vient to the right of public use.1 No proprietary interest in streams of inland water so diminutive in their natural state, that they cannot be used as boatable, or for the transportation of property, (even though by artificial means, at the expense of the owner, they may be made of such public use,) becomes vested in the public.2 § 3. Of the two descriptions of running water (not tide water) mentioned in the preceding section, it is proposed to treat under the name of "Watercourses; "3 though very commonly they are denominated "rivers " or "rivulets," according to their magnitude.1 § 4. A watercourse consists of bed, banks, and water ;5 1 It will be shown, in a subsequent portion of the work, that all flowing water is by the law regarded in three distinct points of view; namely, 1. Where it is altogether private. 2. Where it is private, and at the same time subject to public use. 3. Where the use and property are both public. 2 Wadsworth v. Smith, 2 Fairf. (Me.) R. 278. 3" And they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the watercourses." Isaiah xliv. 4. 4 The word "streams," in the English statute of Sewers, is said not to apply to rivers, pools, ponds, &c., because those waters have their peculiar banks, bounds, and channels; but streams are currents of water flowing independently over the land, and they are placed under the control of the commissioners of sewers. But rivers, although not expressly mentioned, are yet within the survey. A river is defined to be "a running stream pent in on either side, with walls and banks." Woolrych on Sewers, 51. Mr. Sergeant Callis lays it down broadly that rivers, and their channels, waters, and banks, are all fully within the laws of sewers. Callis on Sewers, 77. This must, however, be understood of such rivers as are immediately beneficial to navigation, or to the public. Springs make rivers, and these united form brooks, which, coming forward in streams, compose great rivers that run into the sea. Locke, cited in Johns. Dict. 4to ed. "River." 5 Hale's Treatise, De Jure Maris, &c.; Starr v. Child, 20 Wend. (N. Y.) R. 149; Gavit's Adm'rs v. Chambers, 3 Ohio R. 495. A bank of a river is that space of rising ground above low-water mark which is usually covered by high water, and the term, when used to designate a precise |