Booth

The plaintiffs brought this action to obtain a perpetual injunction restraining the defendants, fourteen in number, from diverting any of the waters of the South Fork of Pitt river or its tributaries.

The case was submitted for decision in the court below upon an agreed statement of the facts, which are in substance as follows:

The plaintiffs own, in severalty, tracts of land in Modoc county aggregating fourteen thousand three hundred and eighty-two acres. The tracts are contiguous, and extend along and on both sides of the South Fork of Pitt river a distance of about twelve miles, with a width of from one to three miles. About ten thousand acres of the land are of the class known as swamp and overflowed land, and the title thereto was acquired under the state laws providing for the sale of such lands. The balance is high land, and the title to about one-half of it was acquired from the United States under the Desert Land Act, and to the other half under the homestead and pre-emption laws.

The South Fork of Pitt river heads in the mountains about twenty miles east of the plaintiffs’ lands, and is fed by several tributary creeks, which unite with it before it reaches their…