SUPREME COURT OF THE CANAL ZONE.

Q. Do you know when your father entered that land?
A. I was very small. I could not say.
The other testimony on this point was equally as uncertain. Plaintiffs offered in evidence the Official Gazette of Panama. and from chapter 17 of that organ, Feliciano Villalobos, the original ancestor, made declaration of denouncement of land denominated Playa de Flor before the District Judge of Colon in the presence of four witnesses in December, 1855. This is the first proof positive of occupancy. No attempt was made to show any declaration or act establishing occupancy or possession of any particular date or time, and the evidence of such of the plaintiffs who testified on the. question of possession fails to disclose or establish any definite or even indefinite date. Having referred to the evidence offered let us now weigh its effect. It will be recalled that plaintiffs allege in the third paragraph of their complaint that the original ancestor died in 1876, possessed of title and in actual possession of premises. In the fifth paragraph they allege that the descendants (plaintiffs) are the absolute and sole owners in common of said premises and improvements. And in the sixth paragraph that plaintiffs, and those under whom they are claiming, have been in exclusive, adverse and actual possession and ownership of premises since the year 1855. Now, on which branch of the tree must we find the fruit? Proof was adduced as to ancestor's death in 1876, but there is an absence of title or ownership in the ancestor. Offer was made as to a subsequent fire in Colon, but had any title or evidence of title been recorded some proof would have remained or been accessible to the complainants. From the evidence of Galindo, a witness for the intervenor, it appears that Charles V., of Spain in 1521 set aside all the lands on the sea coast from Nombre de Dios to the mouth of the Chagres River as lands pertinent and belonging to the municipality of Nombre de Dios; that for no apparent or obvious reason this grant was subsequently ignored, but the premises, which included Playa de Flor, were afterwards held by the Crown and continued as public lands or tierras baldias, and, as such, recognized by New Granada and the Republic of Colombia. Nowhere in passing down through the history of events and nations, as shown by the record, db we find evidence divesting the sovereignty of title and establishing it in the original Villalobos or any member of his family. Occupation and possession unattended by proof of recognition and fulfillment of the lex loci will never justify a legal decree to real estate. Land once ac-

38