shop, the
steam car, and steam vessel, quickening the advance of civilization
and the permanent settlement of the country, and being the agent of
active and constant intercommunication with every part of the
republic.'

Kansas having been admitted since the date of this report, our public
domain, thus described officially, now includes the sixteen _land
States_, and _all_ the Territories.

Of this vast region (originally 1,450,000,000 acres), there was surveyed
up to September, 1860, 441,067,915 acres, and 394,088,712 acres disposed
of by sales, grants, &c., leaving, as the commissioner states,'the total
area of unsold and unappropriated, of offered and unoffered lands of the
public domain on the 30th September, 1860, 1,055,911,288 acres.' This is
'land surface,' exclusive of lakes, bays, rivers, &c., 1,055,911,288
acres, or 1,649,861 square miles, and exceeds one half the area of the
whole Union. The area of New York being 47,000 square miles, is less
than a thirty-fifth part of our public domain. England (proper) has
50,922 square miles, France 203,736, Prussia 107,921, and Germany 80,620
square miles: The area then of our public domain is more than eight
times as large as France, more than fifteen times as large as Prussia,
more than twenty times as large as Germany, more than thirty-two times
as large as England, and larger (excluding Russia) than all Europe,
containing more than 200 millions of people.

As England (proper) contained in 1861, 18,949,916 inhabitants, if our
public domain were as densely settled, its population would exceed 606
millions, and it would be 260,497,561, if numbering as many to the
square mile as Massachusetts. But if, contrary to the opinion before
quoted of the commissioner, one fourth of this domain was unfit for
agriculture, grazing, mining, commerce, or manufactures, the remainder
would still contain 195,373,171 inhabitants (if as densely settled as
Massachusetts), and with every variety of soil, climate, mineral and
agricultural products. Its average fertility far exceeds that of Europe,
as does also the extent of its mines, especially gold, silver, coal, and
iron.

These lands are surveyed at the expense of the government into
town-ships of six miles square, subdivided into sections, and these into
quarter sections (160 acres), set apart for homesteads. Our system of
public surveys into squares, by lines running due north and south, east
and west, is so sim