The provisions in the submitted bills by which the settlers themselves may parcel their lands may need further comment and elucidation. If the whole of the Arid Region was yet unsettled, it might be wise for the Government to undertake the parceling of the lands and employ skilled engineers to do the work, whose duties could then be performed in advance of settlement. It is manifest that this work cannot be properly performed under the contract system; it would be necessary to employ persons of skill and judgment under a salary system. The mining industries which have sprung up in the country since the discovery of gold on the Pacific coast, in 1849, have stimulated immigration, so that settlements are scattered throughout the Arid Region; mining towns have sprung up on the flanks of almost every great range of mountains, and adjacent valleys have been occupied by persons desiring to engage in agriculture. Many of the lands surveyed along the minor streams have been entered, and the titles to these lands are in the hands of actual settlers. Many pasturage farms, or ranches, as they are called locally, have been established throughout the country. These remarks are true of every state and territory in the Arid Region. In the main these ranches or pasturage farms are on Government land, and the settlers are squatters, and some are not expecting to make permanent homes. Many other persons have engaged in pasturage enterprises without having made fixed residences, but move about from place to place with their herds. It is now too late for the Government to parcel the pasturage lands in advance of the wants of settlers in the most available way, so as to closely group residences and give water privileges to the several farms. Many of the settlers are actually on the ground, and are clamoring for some means by which they can obtain titles to pasturage farms of an extent adequate to their wants, and the tens of thousands of individual interests would make the problem a difficult one for the officers of the Government to solve. A system less arbitrary than that of the rectangular surveys now in vogue, and requiring unbiased judgment, overlooking the interests of single individuals and considering only the interests of the greatest number, would meet with local opposition. The surveyors themselves would be placed under many temptations, and would be accused--sometimes rightfully perhaps, sometimes unjustly--of favoritism and corruption, and the service would be subject to the false charges of disappointed men on the one hand, and to truthful charges against corrupt men on the other. In many ways it would be surrounded with difficulties and fall into disrepute.