The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897 Volume 1 Page: 300

Laws and Decrees of Coahuila and Texas.
190
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Art. 9. A square of land measuring one league, consisting of five
thousand varas on each side, or what is the same thing, a superficies of
twenty-five million square varas shall be called a sitio, and this shall be
the unit for enumerating one, two or more sitios, in the same manner
as one million square varas, or one thousand varas, on each side, which
shall constitute a labor, shall be the unit for reckoning one, two or more
labors. The vara for this measure shall consist of three geometrical
feet.
Art. 10. This law shall grant to empersarios, for every ninety families
they settle in the new town, four sitios of grazing land, and three water-
ing days from the aqueducts or canals that can be applied to the cultiva-
tion of the land pertaining to their empresa; but they shall receive pre-
mium only in the ratio of ninety families, although they should intro-
duce more, and they shall be entitled to no prize land for a fraction not
amounting to ninety.
Art. 11. Neither the commissioner or any other authority shall grant
another lot to the same person until, he shall have built upon the
first.
Art. 12. Any empresario who, in consideration of the families he
settles, shall acquire agreeable to article 10, more than eleven sitios,
shall alienate the excess within nine years, and should he not, the re-
spective political authority shall sell the same at public auction, and de-
liver the proceeds to the owners thereof after deducting the costs of sale.
Art. 13. The government may sell to Mexicans the lands they so-
licit, taking care that more than eleven leagues are not united in the
same hands, and on the positive condition that, by the fourth year from
the acquisition thereof, the purchaser shall have introduced upon said
land at least thirty head of large, or two hundred of small stock for each
sitio. The purchaser shall deliver one-fourth, of the value of the land
granted, to the state treasury or where the executive designates, at the
time of the sale; and the remaining three-fourths shall be paid, the first
on the second, the second on the third, and the last on the fourth year,
under penalty of forfeiting the right acquired in the part wherein this
provision is not fulfilled.
Art. 14. Within the ten littoral leagues upon the coast of the Glf
of Mexico the price of each sitio shall be two hundred dollars for grazing
and three hundred for tillage land, not irrigable. In the rest of the de-
partment of Bexar, the price thereof shall be one hundred dollars for
the former, and one hundred and fifty for the latter kind of land;
and that of the other vacant lands of the state fifteen dollars a sitio for
the former, and twenty for the latter.
Art. 15. Lands, whose local situation admits of canals, and not de-
signed for towns may be sold by the executive, to Mexicans only, at three
hundred dollars each sitio in the department of Bexar, and at two hun-
dred in the others of the state; to be paid as article 13 provides, and un-
der the same penalty imposed therein; on the express condition that by
the fourth year from the acquisition thereof the purchaser shall have