Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in all cases in which proof shall be made to the satisfaction of the Commissioner of the General Land Office that any person who obtained a permit under the act entitled "An Act to provide for the armed occupation and settlement of the unsettled part of the peninsula of Florida," approved August fourth, eighteen hundred and forty-two, and who was an occupant under that act, and the act amendatory thereof, approved June fifteenth, eighteen hundred and forty-four, and who actually occupied or settled under said acts, and did not voluntarily relinquish and abandon the same, but continued to reside on said frontier south of said line specified in said act of eighteen hundred and forty-two, thereby aiding to effect the object of said acts, and who has not received the lands provided by said acts, such settler shall be entitled to a grant and patent for the land so occupied or settled by him, the same as if all the conditions and stipulations of said acts and requirements of the General Land Office in relation thereto had been fully and strictly fulfilled and complied with.

Sec. 2. Be it further enacted, That in all cases where the lands settled or occupied by such settler, or any part thereof, were or are not legally subject to donation under the said acts on any account whatever, then such settler may locate his right, or the part so interfered with, on any vacant public lands in the same, or any adjacent township.

Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That this act shall extend to, and be construed and executed for, the benefit of the widow and heirs of any settler, according to the principles of the fifth section of said first above-recited act.

Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That immediately after the passage of this act, the Secretary of the Treasury shall appoint an agent to proceed forthwith to the different county seats of the counties of the State of Florida, where said lands lie, who shall attend at least ten successive days at each county seat, if so long time be necessary, to take and receive proof by depositions before him, or in such manner as he may prescribe in relation to such settlement or occupation, and of settlers being entitled under this act to a grant or donation of land as aforesaid; and said agent shall also attend at such other places in said settlements as the convenience of such settlers in furnishing their proofs may demand, under the instructions of the General Land Office; and said agent shall, within five months after he shall commence his duties in said State, transmit all the proofs he may take, and make report of his opinion as to each case to said Commissioner of the General Land Office, who shall proceed forthwith to examine and decide said cases: Provided, That if any settler does not submit his proof to such agent within four months after reasonable notice, by ad

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vertisement of the times and places of his attendance to receive such proof, said settler shall not have the benefit of this act; and all the cases reported as aforesaid shall be definitively decided by the Commissioner of the General Land Office within two months after the report thereof is received at his office; and said agent shall be allowed the same compensation as is allowed by law to examining agents of the Treasury Department.

Approved, July 1, 1848.