maps, but only an intermediate point on one sectional map. When the four maps were filed, and in 1872, the Land Department, holding that the Atlantic and Pacific Company was authorized to build not only from the Colorado River directly to the Pacific Ocean, but also thence north to San Francisco, approved them as establishing the line of definite location. Subsequently, and when Mr. Justice Lamar was Secretary of the Interior, the matter was reëxamined, and it was properly held that under the act of 1866, the grant to the Atlantic and Pacific was exhausted when its line reached the Pacific Ocean. San Buenaventura was, therefore, held to be *597 the western terminus, and the location of the line approved to that point. The fact that its lineCongress as laws as well as grants; that *598 Congress intends no scramble between companies for the grasping of titles by priority of location, but that it is to be regarded as though title passes as of the date of the act, and to the company having priority of grant, and, therefore, that in the eye of the law it is now as though there never was a period of time during which any title to these lands was in the Southern Pacific. As said in the case of Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway v. Kansas Pacific Railway, 97 U.S. 491, 497:
"It is always to be borne in mind, in construing a Congressional grant, that the act by which it is made is a law as well as