nights altogether, and not more than one night at a time. There was no actual residence on his homestead. A son of the manager also made. a homestead entry, and his house servant took up two tracts under the homestead and pre-emption laws respectively. The latter is a single woman of foreign birth and ignorant of the laws and customs of the country, and what she did was by direction of her employer. She admitted to the agent that she slept on her pre-emption claim but eight nights, and took only one meal on her homestead claim. The other fifteen entries were made by men who were employed by the company, and who resided at the company's ranch during the whole period of their alleged residence on their claims, except that occasionally, while herding the company's stock, they would spend a night on the claims. not oftener than once a week, and generally less than once a month, Each of the parties were paid $200 for making entry. The improvements on the lands, consisting in most of the cases of a small piece of breaking and a shanty, were placed there by the manager of the company, and the same house in several instances was made to serve as a pretended dwelling on two and three different claims in succession. Three of the entrymen admitted to the agent that they each had an agreement with the company to make an entry for its benefit in consideration of $200.

mens.

The methods of illegal appropriation of public lands in western Nebraska and Kansas are similar to those in Dakota, and there is a species of aggravated fraud practiced by "land brokers" and "land agents" in many districts of which two or three cases will be mentioned as speciA land attorney at Hastings, Nebr., employs agents to assist him in finding parties who can be induced to make timber-culture and homestead entries in the McCook office, Nebraska, and at the Denver office, in Colorado. The parties are advised by him, contrary to law, that they can make such entries without going to the district in which the land is located, and upon the payment of from seventy-five to one hundred dollars they will be furnished with the description of a tract of good agricultural land and their entry papers prepared without additional cost or inconvenience to them. If a party accepts the offer, he is told to sign an affidavit and application, usually in blank. This being done, the blanks are filled up and the papers are transmitted to the land agent's associate, who is an officer within the land district, and authorized to administer oaths in such cases. This officer places his seal and jurat to the affidavit as having been sworn to before him. The papers then appear all right on their face and are forwarded to the proper land office, and the entry is allowed. In some cases they are given to a person, hired for the purpose, who goes before the local officers and personates the applicant. The inspector for this district has recently submitted a report, accompanied by affidavits of eleven parties who made entries under these circumstances at the instance of said attorney, and who witnessed a number of other persons make entries

in the same way. The affiants describe the manner in which they were persuaded to make the entries, under the belief that they could legally do so, and give all the facts and circumstances of the transaction. One of the parties states that he went to Hastings, Nebr., in 1885, and became acquainted with the land attorney referred to, who had been recommended to him as a proper person to go to for information as to the best place to obtain Government land. The attorney told him he could get a timber-culture and homestead entry in Colorado, and if he would pay him seventy-five dollars he, the attorney, would attend to the matter at Denver and procure the entry without further expense. He thereupon produced the necessary application and affidavit, and the affiant signed them and paid the fee, taking a receipt therefor. The applicant had not then been in Colorado, and did not go there until several months after the entries were allowed. Both entries appear of record in the Denver office, the affidavit purporting in one case that it was made before the then register, and in the other that it was made before a clerk of a county court in Colorado.

Another homestead entry was made in the name of a woman residing in Illinois. She swears that she entered into a correspondence with an individual at Hastings who was acting as agent for the attorney. She was advised that by paying eighty dollars a homestead entry could be procured for her in Colorado. The money was accordingly paid by draft, and in a short time she received the receiver's receipt for land in the Denver district. She swears positively that she was never in Colorado or Nebraska until about six months after the allowance of her entry, when she went out to the land and found it in possession of a pre-emptor who had made his settlement prior to the date of her entry. She was then compelled to abandon the claim, although she had gone from Illinois to Colorado with the purpose of making it her home. The letters from the attorney's agent are furnished, together with his affidavit, in which he admits the part he took in the transaction, and acknowledges the receipt of forty-five dollars, which he appropriated to his own use. He also told the inspector that he signed the name of the woman to the homestead papers at the request of the attorney, and that the latter procured the entry through some one in the Denver district. The woman appears to have been ignorant of the law, and to have acted in entire good faith, obeying implicitly the direc tions given her by the land attorney and his agent. The then register at Denver certified that the homestead affidavit was made before him, and he allowed the entry.

A homestead entry was procured for a resident of Minnesota in much the same way. In this case, however, the application and affidavit were forwarded through the mail by the attorney to the party's address in Minnesota for his signature. He signed and returned them, and the entry was afterward allowed at the Denver office, the affidavit purporting to have been executed before the receiver. The entryman

found upon going to Colorado that a pre-emptor was in possession of the tract under a prior right. The letter of the attorney, transmitting the papers for signature and the corroborated affidavit of the entryman reciting the facts, are on file in this office.

In another case the affidavit of the entryman sets forth that the attorney made a homestead entry for him in 1880, and about three years. afterward commuted the entry to cash and made final proof without his knowledge or consent. The land was immediately conveyed to a third party by a deed purporting to have been acknowledged before the attorney, he being also the only witness to its execution. The entryman swears he was never on the land, nor did he ever convey it to any one, but says that upon one occasion, before the proof was made, the attorney came and told him that he could sell the claim for him, and to aid him in the matter he signed a paper, the contents of which he did not know, as he could not read. It was the agreement that if the attorney found a purchaser he was to let the entryman know, but the latter heard nothing from it until he ascertained that the entry had been made in his name and the land sold. The entryman is an ignorant German, and is unable to read or write.

The entry in the other seven cases in which the affidavits of the entrymen are furnished, as well as seventeen additional ones made in their presence by other persons, were all procured in the same manner by the attorney without the claimants being in the land district where the lands are located.

In the Garden City district, Kansas, and elsewhere, a number of land firms have been reported for disbarment on account of their illegitimate practices and unprofessional conduct. It seems that these men first procure parties, who have no expectation of going upon the public lands or complying with the law, to make homestead and timber-culture entries and pre-emption filings, or make the entries and filings themselves of the valuable lands. The entryman then relinquishes the entry to the United States and places the relinquishment in the hands of the land agent, who holds it until he can get a purchaser. If it is not sold before the entry becomes subject to forfeiture, a collusive contest is brough tagainst it in the interest of the holder of the relinquishment for the purpose of retaining control over the land. The ultimate purchaser of the relinquishment procures the right of entry by filing the relinquishment and immediately presenting his application to enter the

land.

These firms all advertise relinquishments for sale, in many cases specifying the lands and the prices asked for the relinquishment, the prices varying from fifty to five hundred dollars and upward. They also employ "rustlers" to induce or force settlers to purchase relinquishments rom their employers. The settler, who is generally a stranger and unacquainted in the county, spends a few days in riding over the country and examining the vacant lands. He finds, as the "rustlers" had told him, that all the vacant Government lands are

worthless, and that his only opportunity to get a home is to buy a re linquishment or to contest an entry. The latter course he soon learns is expensive and the result doubtful, as the land agents will throw every obstacle in his way to defeat him. One of these firms hire five or six "rustlers" and clerks. They have a cot or bed in front of the land-office door for their men to sleep upon at night, so that when the hour arrives for opening the office they may be able to enter first and manipulate their relinquishments and contests and keep out legitimate claimants. It is shown that by this means they held possession of the land-office door on one occasion for thirty days and intimidated all actual settlers who attempted to make entries, and defeated them in every effort to do so. On one occasion the head "rustler" rushed into the office with his crowd of followers and presented, among other papers, a relinquishment executed before a notary public in the firm's office, together with an application of one of the parties to enter the tract. The register attempted to question the applicant, but he was warned by the "rustler" to answer no questions, and was immediately hurried away to prevent the Government agent, who was also present, from interviewing him. This firm appear as attorneys of record for two dif ferent contestants against the same entry, the same grounds of contest being alleged in both cases. These and similar contests are filed to enable the attorneys to retain control of the land.

It is shown by an affidavit of a settler on file in this office that the firm advised him to make a second pre-emption filing, contrary to law, and prepared his papers and furnished him with a description of land to pre-empt; that after living on the land six or eight months, and expending four or five hundred dollars in improving it, he discovered that his filing was illegal, and he immediately went to the local office to change it to a homestead entry, where he learned that another party had entered the tract through the agency of the same firm that had located him upon the land. A large amount of testimony has been furnished by affidavits of settlers themselves, showing the manner in which they had been swindled by other land firms, who had induced them to buy relinquishments of lands the title to which they could not acquire. In some cases the settler was persuaded to give up his last horse, only to find afterwards that he had received nothing for it.

The greater portion of fraudulent entries in Wyoming have been made under the desert-land act in the interest of cattlemen or ditch and water companies. Many of the claimants are residents of the states, who have no interests in the territory, and merely permit some friend or acquaintance there to use their names to obtain title to the lands or hold them for the period within which the entryman is allowed by the law to make proof. As this act allows each entryman six hundred and forty acres, a few entries are sufficient to appropriate a large body of land.

To illustrate the methods pursued, I select the case of a certain enterprising individual who settled on a stream in southeastern Wyoming ten or twelve years ago, and after the lapse of several years made a homestead entry of the tract upon which he resided. As his herds of cattle increased he gradually took into his range the greater portion of the valley without danger of interference by others. The demand for lands, however, after a time increased, and, in order to retain control of his range, he induced eight parties to make desert entries in his interest, three to make timber-culture entries, and one to make a homestead entry. He also located two small tracts with soldiers' additional scrip and made a desert entry in his own name. By this means he appropriated something over five thousand acres of public land. Upon learning of the special agent's investigation, the homestead and three timber culture claimants relinquished their entries, which had not been perfected. The desert-land claimants had submitted their final proofs, purporting to show the reclamation of the legal subdivisions of each claim and the cultivation of most of the lands.

The investigation developed the facts as to the fraudulent character of the entries; that the lands were all within the inclosure of the ranchman or his transferees; that he had the exclusive use and control over them during the period covered by the proofs; and that, with the exception of a small strip of land along a ditch, constructed for the purpose of irrigating other lands, and a tract embraced in one of the entries, none of the lands had been reclaimed, nor had the tracts been cultivated or improved, as alleged in the final proofs. As a result of this enterprise a two-thirds' interest in the lands was conveyed by the ranchman to third parties for one hundred and ninety thousand dollars, including a tract upon which proof had not been made. This last tract, immediately after its entry, was transferred by the entryman direct to the ranchman's grantees. Three of the desert entrymen furnished their affidavits to the fact that the entries were made at the instance of the ranchman and under an agreement to convey the lands to him after entry, the conversations on the subject and all the facts being given with great particularity. It also appears from these affidavits that the ranchman paid all fees and expenses in the cases, persuaded the parties that they had the legal right to make the entries, and induced them to supply "proofs" for each other by signing prepared papers without reading them, and without going before an officer authorized to administer oaths. Another entryman admitted to the agent that he did not know that the land described in his entry was the tract he had entered, and that he had done nothing to reclaim the land. One of the other entrymen was a resident of Iowa.

A case in another section of Wyoming will be cited to further illustrate the abuses and manner of violating the provisions of the desert-land act. Three brothers and two other parties associated themselves together for the purpose of taking up a cattle ranch upon the public lands. One of the brothers was a resident of Massachusetts, and another member