446 BALTIMORE v. McKIM.—3 BLAND.

The public lands can only be sold for a valuable consideration, or disposed

of with a view to some public benefit.

No appeal from a decision of the Chancellor as Judge of the land office.
The extent of the authority to acquire a right to land covered by the tide of

the basin of Baltimore, by making improvements thereon, (b)
A patent may be granted for land covered by navigable water subject to the

right of navigation.

No title can be obtained from the land office for any thing but land.
All improvements made upon land, by any one without right, belong to the

owner of such land.

THIS case was brought before the Chancellor in the land office
on caveats by the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore against
the issuing of patents on several certificates returned by Isaac
McKim, Jannet Hollins, Joseph King, Junior, Robert Howard,
John White, Thomas Wilson, John Spear Nicholas, Dabney S.
Carr, John S. Smith, Robert Smith and James Howard, for sepa-
rate parcels of the ground called Smith's Wharf. These certifi-
cates and caveats were entirely distinct. An order was passed on
each appointing a day for hearing, directing the surveyor of the
county to lay down the lands, and authorizing the parties to take
testimony before any justice of the peace, on giving two days
notice as usual; but as they depended upon the same principles of
law, in all respects, the parties by consent, conducted them as one
case; depositions and proofs were taken, which with a plot of the
whole ground, made by the surveyor, were returned; after which
the solicitors of the parties were fully heard.

BLAKB, C.,29th November, 1831.—To have a correct conception
of the matter in controversy, it will be proper to recollect, that
the City of Baltimore was laid out, and has grown up round the
margin of a cove of the Patapsco River, near the mouth, and to
the westward of the stream called Jones Falls, which passes
through the city; that much of the margin of this cove was origi-
nally a marsh inundated at every reflux of the tide; that as the
* only navigable entrance to this cove, is by a narrow chan-
nel from the east, every encroachment upon it, by wharfing
or making fast land, following the directions of the streets of the
city, must be from the north, from the west, or from the south,
and that Gay street approaches this cove, now called the basin, in
a direct line from the north, and terminates at its intersection, at
right angles with Pratt street, a part of the south side of which
passes a few feet above the head of what is now called Smith's
dock.

The land now claimed is a strip about twenty-nine feet wide,
lying between the east side of Smith's dock, and an elongation of

(b) See Dugan v. Baltimore, 5 G. & J. 357, note.