Peralta

This cause comes up on objections filed to the official survey on the part of the United States and of certain parties who have intervened for their interests. The principal point in controversy is the location of the northern boundary or dividing line between the rancho of the Peraltas and that of Castro. The official survey has been made in conformity with an amended decree of this court. This amendment was allowed by the court on the supposition that the error to be corrected was merely clerical, and that the decree, as amended, expressed the intention of the court when the original decree was framed. The cause having been originally tried in this court by the late judge of the Southern district, I was, .at the time of allowing the amendment, unacquainted with the merits, and assumed, perhaps too hastily, that the alleged error was merely accidental. It is now objected that the court had no power to make the amendment, and that, the decree having been affirmed in the supreme court, it is res adjudicata, and the law of the case, whatever be its correctness. I shall consider the question thus raised precisely as if no amendment had been made, and shall inquire whether, by the…