Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1883 — Fine Work on the Prairies. [ARTICLE]

Fine Work on the Prairies.

So great has been the emigration to new Territories that the government at times has found difficulty in, surveying land fast enough. Their are now, for example, whole counties in Dakota yet to be surveyed and laid out. All this work is under the general charge of the Surveyor General of the government. The work is generally given out by contract. It now costs about SBOO to survey a township and lay it out in sections of six hundred and forty acres each. Stones, wooden posts or mounds, as the case may be, are employed to designate the section divisions, together with four “proving holes.” There is wonderful skill displayed by those accustomed to the prairies, in finding thpse mounds and proving holes. They readily detect them in the long prairie grass, where the inexperienced eye and foot fail to find them. Your admiration is excited as your prairie guide drives or walks right up to these sectional marks, which you, yourself, are unable to discover until they are pointed out. The contractors under the Surveyor General generally perform they work in a very satisfactory manner. They are closely watched and the landmarks are carefully saved by the incoming settlers who wish to keep them preserxed>iD. order ta avoid the expensive suits which are so often had over farm boundaries in both the new and older regions of the country.— W. Judd, in American Agrlculturist