In Howard v. Ingersoll (1851) 54 U.S. 381, addressed a controversy over the boundary between Georgia and Alabama. The boundary had been defined in a cession by Georgia to the United States as beginning on the western bank of the Chattahoochee River where it crosses a stated line and running thence up the river "along the western bank thereof" to the great bend. The nature of the controversy was such that it called for an interpretation and application of the words just quoted. At the locus there was an abrupt and high bank on the western, or Alabama, side which was washed by the river in periods of ordinary high water. In periods of low water, which comprised two-thirds of the year, a sloping strip of from thirty to sixty yards of dry land lay between the abrupt bank and the water. The flowing stream was about two hundred yards wide in periods of ordinary high water and about thirty yards in periods of low water. At that point the water never reached the top of the abrupt bank, but at other points, where the bank was lower, the water in exceptional times of flood overflowed the bank and temporarily submerged adjacent lands. The case was tried in an Alabama court, which ruled that the boundary was at the line of ordinary low water. That ruling was sustained by the Supreme Court of the State, 17 Ala. 780, and the case was brought here on writ of error. Another case involving the same questions, and brought here from the Circuit Court for the District of Georgia, was heard at the same time, but a description of the first suffices for present purposes. The Supreme Court, upon much consideration, held that the boundary was not at the line of ordinary low water, but along the water-washed bank or elevation which bounds the river bed and confines the water within definite outer limits, save in the exceptional instances when it is so far at flood that it overflows its restraining banks and spreads over adjacent lands. The ruling and the grounds on which it was put are indicated in the following excerpts from the opinion: (P. 415.) "When the commissioners used the words bank and river, they did so in the popular sense of both. When banks of rivers were spoken of, those boundaries were meant which contain their waters at their highest flow, and in that condition they make what is called the bed of the river. They knew that rivers have banks, shores, water, and a bed, and that the outer line on the bed of a river, on either side of it, may be distinguished upon every stage of its water, high or low; at its highest or lowest current. It neither takes in overflowed land beyond the bank, nor includes swamps or low grounds liable to be overflowed, but reclaimable for meadows or agriculture, or which, being too low for reclamation, though not always covered with water, may be used for cattle to range upon, as natural or uninclosed pasture. But it may include spots lower than the bluff or bank, whether there is or is not a growth upon them, not forming a part of that land which, whether low or high, we know to be upland or fast lowland, if such spots are within the bed of the river. Such a line may be found upon every river, from its source to its mouth. It requires no scientific exploration to find or mark it out. The eye traces it in going either up or down a river, in any stage of water. With such an understanding of what a river is, as a whole, from its parts, there is no difficulty in fixing the boundary-line in question." Mr. Justice Curtis gave a satisfactory definition of the bank and bed of a river. He said: "The banks of a river are those elevations of land which confine the waters, when they rise out of the bed; and the bed is that soil so usually covered by water as to be distinguishable from the banks by the character of the soil or vegetation, or both, produced by the common presence and action of flowing water. But neither the line of ordinary high-water mark, nor of ordinary low-water mark, nor of a middle state of water, can be assumed as the line dividing the bed from the banks. This line is to be found by examining the bed and banks, and ascertaining where the presence and action of water are so common and usual, and so long continued in all ordinary years, as to mark upon the soil of the bed a character distinct from that of the banks, in respect to vegetation, as well as in respect to the nature of the soil itself. Whether this line between the bed and the banks will be found above or below, or at a middle stage of water, must depend upon the character of the stream. . . . But in all cases the bed of a river is a natural object, and is to be sought for, not merely by the application of any abstract rules, but as other natural objects are sought for and found, by the distinctive appearances they present; the banks being fast land on which vegetation, appropriate to such lands in the particular locality, grows, wherever the bank is not too steep to permit such growth, and the bed being soil of a different character and having no vegetation, or only such as exists when commonly submerged in water."