circuit courts.

It now consists of three judges, elected in 1880 to serve six years, four years, and three years respectively, their successors holding office for six years.

The State is divided, I believe, into five circuits, and for each a judge is elected to serve for six years.

The circuit courts have all judicial power, authority, and jurisdiction not specifically vested in any other court, and have appellate jurisdiction over the county courts.

The county court consists of the county judge, who holds office for four years, and two county commissioners. Together they transact county business, and have a jurisdiction over civil cases where not more than five hundred dollars is in issue, and over the smaller class of criminal offenses where the punishment does not extend to death or to imprisonment in the penitentiary.

The Supreme Court of the United States has a district judge presiding over a court at Portland. That court is the arena for trying all cases where one of the parties is not a citizen of the State, and also all cases in which the Federal laws and Constitution, as distinguished from the State system, are involved.

The police of the State is in the hands of the sheriffs and their deputies, the sheriff being elected by popular vote every two years. The city of Portland has a regular police force of its own. The other towns in the State appoint marshals, who perform police duties within the city limits.

The sheriffs are also tax-collectors. It should be added that the State and county revenue, as distinct from Federal revenue, is collected in one payment by an assessment of so many mills (or thousandths) in the dollar on the total amount of property of every kind

COUNTY OFFICERS.

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owned in the State by the tax-payer. The amount on which each man has to pay is ascertained by the county assessor, in consultation with the tax-payer. No form of property is allowed to escape, but a reasonable valuation is placed on possessions of a doubtful or fluctuating nature; and exemptions are allowed for household furniture and clothes and small possessions to the extent of three hundred dollars.

The county clerks have also to stand the racket of election every two years. In Benton County we are fortunate enough to have the services of a gentleman who has been reëlected eight times. His long experience in the office makes him an absolute dictionary of information on the history of every farm in the county. He is, to my mind, an illustration of the absurdity of this election and reëlection. Every two years he has to waste a month in going over the county, spouting on every stump, to please the electors. He has had to endure several contests, evoked by the sayings, "It's well to have a change now and then," "He's been there long enough; let some one else have a show," etc. But any new-comer into his office would have to spend a year or two in getting up the very information about the county which the experienced official has at his very finger-ends. And his long enjoyment of the office is the only reason I have heard given for a change.

In the county clerk's office are kept the recordbooks for the county, and also the maps of the various townships, received from the chief office at Oregon City. In the record-books are copied all deeds affecting the title to land in the county. The chief effect of thus recording deeds is to give such public notice of the object of the deed that no man subsequently deal

ing with a fraudulent vender can be treated as an innocent purchaser without notice, to the injury of the real purchaser. All deeds affecting land have to be executed in the presence of two witnesses, and acknowledged before a county clerk or a notary public. The interest of a wife in her husband's property is carefully guarded; and, in order to give proper title, the wife has to join in conveying land to a purchaser.

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In addition to the various judicial officers above described, there are the not-to-be-omitted justices of the peace. Their functions are extensive: among others, they can perform marriages, and at short notice, too. I have heard of one justice, known for his expeditious ways, before whose house a runaway couple halted on their wagon. The man shouted for the justice, who appeared. "Say, judge, can you marry us right away?" "I guess so, my son.' 'Well, then, let's have it." Whereupon the justice mounted the wagonwheel, and there stood with his foot on the hub. "What's your name ?” "Jehoshaphat Smith." "Well, then, wilt thou have this woman, so help you "Yes." 66 ?" "My fee's a dollar; drive on. "The justice in the city tries for assaults and drunkenness, and administers for the latter seven days in the calaboose a hole of a place in a back alley-detention there no trifle, especially if, like a tipsy little friend of mine, he finds, on awaking with his customary headache, that his room-mate is a big countryman, very drunk, who has the reputation of "smashing everything up" when he has got what some here call "his dibs."

CHAPTER XIII.

Land laws-Homesteads and preëmption-How to choose and obtain Government land-University land-School land-Swamp land— Railroad and wagon-road grants-Lieu lands-Acreages owned by the various companies.

To make this book useful, I must run the risk of making it tedious by some account of the land system relating to the preëmption and homestead laws applicable to the public lands of the State.

It is true that, long since, the prairie-lands of the Willamette Valley have all been taken up and are in private ownership. But there are very large tracts indeed of public lands in the hilly and wooded portions of Western Oregon still open; there is also an abundance of open land in the fine valleys of Eastern and Southern Oregon available. There are still upward of thirty million acres unsurveyed out of the sixty million nine hundred thousand which the State contains.

There are five United States land-offices in Oregon : namely, at Oregon City, for the upper and central parts of the Willamette Valley, including also Northwestern Oregon generally; at Roseburg, for Southwestern Oregon; at Linkville, for the southeastern portion; at La Grande, for Eastern Oregon, strictly so called; and at the Dalles, for the great counties of Wasco and Umatilla-the northern part of the State. At each of the land-offices a register and a receiver are stationed; and the maps of the district are also deposited there for general reference.

When the settler has ascertained that a piece of land is eligible—that is, that it will suit him not only for clearing and farming, but also to build his house on and live there he goes to the neighbors to find out the nearest corner posts or stones, and thence by compass he can determine roughly the boundary-lines. The land must lie in a compact form, not less than forty acres wide; thus he can take his one hundred and sixty acres in the shape of a clean quarter of a section or of an L, or in a strip across the section of forty acres wide; but he can not pick out forty acres here, and a detached forty there, and so on.

He then goes to the county clerk's office, where duplicates of the land-office maps are kept. He finds out there with sufficient correctness if the piece he wants is open to settlement. The land-office is the only source of quite certain information, because it is possible that a claim may have been put on file at the land-office, particulars of which have not yet reached the county clerk. Being satisfied that the land is open, the intending settler must next determine whether to preempt or homestead. If he desires to preëmpt, and by payment to Government of $1.25 per acre for public land outside the limits of railroad and wagon-road grants, or $2.50 per acre for land within those limits, to obtain an immediate title, he must be sure that he does not fall within the two exceptions; for no one can acquire a right of preemption who is the proprietor of three hundred and twenty acres of land in any State or Territory, nor can any one who quits or abandons his residence on his own land to reside on the public land in the same State or Territory.

But, first of all, he or she must have one of the