The water is so clear that the natives climb into the overhanging elms or sycamores, or lie peering down from a jutting rock and do their fishing with a Winchester.
About ten o'clock the travelers crossed the Poor Fork and fifteen minutes later rode into Harlan Town; and to the office of the company; a three-story red brick building fronting the court house square.
CHAPTER III.
Cornwall Locates In Harlan.
With the exception of a few counties in western Kentucky, no official survey was ever made of the state. In the unsurveyed portion grants for land issued by the Commonwealth varied in size from a few acres to as many as two hundred thousand; and called for natural objects as beginning and boundary corners.
The result of such a lax system was that often the same boundary was covered by several grants; and the senior grant held the land.
Many grants were so indefinite of description, the beginning corner calling for certain timber or a large stone in a heavily timbered and, in sections, rocky country, as to be impossible of identification or location. Other grants were so poorly surveyed as to be void for uncertainty and yet other boundaries were claimed by squatters who held by adverse possession against any paper title.
A person owning the paper title to a thousand acre boundary traceable to the Commonwealth without break or flaw, might not be the owner in fact of a single acre of land; as the whole boundary might be covered by senior grants or the natural objects called for, impossible to find.