taker up, and not the second, shall be put to seek for the benefit of
his warrant elsewhere; and this word up the river, creek, &c. instead
of down, or down instead of up, shall not vitiate any grant
or deed, by which land is conveyed from one man to another,
where the rest of the words in the said grant or deed manifestly
imply it only to be a mistake, and the first taker up shall rectify
his survey and take a new grant, which shall be under the same
rent and no other.  Provided always, and be it enacted, That nothing
in this act contained shall alter, change, make void, make
erroneous, or defeat any judgment give and recovered in the provincial
court before the making of this act, nor make void any arbitration
or award under hand and seal, given before the making
of this act, although such judgments and awards are given contrary
to the meaning of this act; but all such judgments, and all such
awards, though they might not otherwise be good about land, shall
be and are hereby confirmed, other errors in law excepted; provided
such awards shall, within a year and a day, be recorded in
their respective county records after the publication of this act,
and acknowledged in open court by one of the arbitrators or umpire.
And if a certificate be so defective that one whole line be
left out, yet of the other lines be so expressed that the shew what
length and breadth were designed, and that the length and breadth
would make out the quantity of land which the taker up had due to
him, and the lines expressed, do infer to common reason and sense,
that the lines were left out by mistake, in all such cases, the first
taker up shall hold his land against any later taker up, as if the
certificate were good and entire.  And if any man hold a tract of
land which is expressed to be bound on another tract, and to begin
at a marked tree standing in the line of that tract on which it
is said to be bound, but the first marked tree cannot be proved nor
found, yet if any other marked tree of the tract be found and
proved, that found and proved tree shall rule the bounds of the
tract, yet so as only the precise number of perches shall be held;
but if no tree be found, the owner may resurvey and lay it out
again, beginning in the line where it was at first said to begin,
but it shall then be accounted latter than any other survey in
them parts, and the taker up shall not intrude, nor hold part of
any tract of land whereon a plantation is sealed, and whereof
there is certain proof of the bounds, because a certainty is to be
preferred before an uncertainty; but what land he shall include
by his survey, clear of other tracts, he may hold for ever by
virtue of his first warrant, and the like shall be adjudged in all
parallel cases, where no tree is to be found, if the owner shall think
it any advantage by saving his warrant, but then, after such resurvey,
he shall not pretend to his former survey any more for
ever; yet if any such marked tree was said to begin in the point
of a fork, at the mouth of a creek, or such other place, which is,
as it were, a natural beginning, there, if no tree is found, (yet if
the place is certainly known and proved,) a jury shall find a point
or prick to begin at, most agreeable to the description in the certificate
of survey or grant of the same.  No evidence admitted to
prove a marked tree where the record expresses none.