Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the first section of the act entitled "An Act for authenticating certain records," approved February twenty-second, eighteen hundred and forty-nine, be, and the same is hereby, amended so as to read as follows:

Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That it may and shall be lawful for the keepers or persons having the custody of

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laws, judgments, orders, decrees, journals, correspondence, or other public documents of any foreign government or its agents, relating to the title to lands claimed by or under the United States, on the application of one of the head of one of the departments, the Solicitor of the Treasury, or the Commissioner of the General Land Office, to authenticate the same under his hand and seal, and certify the same to be correct and true copies of such laws, judgments, orders, decrees, journals, correspondence, or other public documents; and when the same shall be certified by an American minister or consul under his hand and seal of office, or by a judge of one of the United States courts under his hand and seal, to be true copies of the originals, the same shall be sealed up by him and returned to the Solicitor of the Treasury, who shall file the same in his office, and cause it to be recorded in a book to be kept for that purpose. A copy of said laws, judgments, orders, decrees, journals, correspondence, or other public documents so filed, or of the same so recorded in said book, may be read in evidence in all courts, where the title to land claimed by or under the United States may come into question, equally with the originals thereof.

Approved, March 2, 1849.