A certificate preliminary to a purchase of government land.
1837. Whenever a good tract of land is ready for sale, [they] cover it over with their floats, (warrants of the required habitation,) and thus put down competition.—H. Martineau, ‘Society in America,’ ii. 92. (N.E.D.) (Italics in the original.)
1840. Mr. Alford of Georgia spoke of the result in giving the settler who happened to have set down on [a] section a float to the same amount.—House of Representatives, May 27: Congressional Globe, p. 124.
1841. Mr. King of Alabama said that the proposed pre-emption bill was going back too much to the old system of “floats,” under which frauds innumerable had been perpetrated.—U.S. Senate, Jan. 20: id., p. 194, App.
