A number of cases thus he dropped, and that on no
other than his own responsibility. They were invariably those whose
issue in the courts might very well be in doubt, so that it was
impossible to tell, without trying them, how the decision would jump.
Furthermore, and principally, he was always satisfied that the claimant
had meant well and honestly throughout, and had lapsed through
ignorance, bad advice, or merely that carelessness of the letter of the
legal form so common among mountaineers. Such cases were far more
numerous than he had supposed. The men had, in many instances, come into
the country early in its development. They had built their cabins by the
nearest meadow that appealed to them; for, to all intents and purposes,
the country was a virgin wilderness whose camping sites were many and
open to the first comer. Only after their households had been long
established as squatters did these pioneers awake to an imperfect
understanding that further formality was required before these, their
homes, could be legally their own. Living isolated these men, even then,
blundered in their applications or in the proving up of their claims.
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