MEANDER

To meander means to follow a winding or flexuous course; and when it is said, in a description of land, “thence with the meander of the river,” it must mean a meandered line,a line which follows the sinuosities of the river,or, in other words, that the river is the boundary between the points indicated. Turner v. Parker, 14 Or. 341, 12 Pac. 495; Schurmeier v. St Paul & P. R. Co., 10 Minn. 100 (Gil. 75), 88 Am. Dec. 59. This term is used in some jurisdictions with the meaning of surveying and mapping a stream according to its meanderings, or windings and turnings. See Jones v. Petti bone, 2 Wis. 317. Meander lines. Lines run in surveying particular portions of the public lands which border on navigable rivers, not as boundaries of the tract, but for the purpose of defining the sinuosities of the banks of the stream, and as the means of ascertaining the quantity of land in the fraction subject to sale, and which is to be paid for by the purchaser. In preparing the official plat from the field notes, the meander line is represented as the border line of the stream, and shows that the water course, and not the meander line as naturally run on the ground, is the boundary. St. Paul & P. R. Co. v. Schurmeier, 7 Wall. 286, 19 L. Ed. 74; Niles v. Cedar Point Club, 175 U. S. 300, 20 Sup. Ct. 124, 44 L. Ed. 171.