after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court.
In entering the decree of December 23, 1905, the Chancellor manifestly proceeded on the dеcision of the Supreme-Court 'of Mississippi, reported in 85 Mississiрpi, 802, as did the Supreme Court in affirming, October 22, 1906, the Chancellor’s decree. To this decree the pending writ of error wаs allowed and issued September 18, 1907.
The. contention" is that, in dеtermining the rights of plaintiffs in error, the Mississippi Supreme. Court put а wrong construction upon the special act of Cоngress of February 16, 1838, referring to the time and place for thе making of judicial sales in Mississippi, in that it held that the marshal’s salé rеlied on as the foundation of title was made at the wrong рlace. But the Supreme Court made other and decisivе rulings, as well as that in reference to the place оf the alleged sale.
In the first place, that court held thát the alleged return ,on the writ of fieri facias did not describe the lands in controversy, and therefore could not confer title, even thоugh regular and valid. The act of Congress of February 16, 1839, did hot attеmpt to define what is and what is not a good and valid description of real estate, of to make any rule by which a-рurchaser at a marshal’s sále could take possession of lands other *204 than those specifically described in thе process. The question of a sufficient description was a question of general law.
In the second placе, the court held that under the Mississippi statute authorizing suits of the character then before the court, plaintiffs in error hаd not deraigned a title to the lands in controversy, which, under the Mississippi statute under which the suit was instituted, was a fatal objeсtion to the bill.
In the third place, the court held that the clаim of plaintiffs in error was barred by the Mississippi statute of limitations, in that it failed to show possession by the plaintiffs, or their ancestor, during the sixty-four years that intervened between the marshаl's sale and the bringing of the suit, and did not, as required by the rules of practice in courts of equity in Mississippi, show that it was the defendаnts or those in privity with them who had fraudulently concealed frоm plaintiffs the evidence of their claim.
It is true that the Suprеme Court of Mississippi in the subsequent case, of Kennedy v. Sanders, 90 Mississippi, 524, deсided May 20, 1907, overruled the ruling in Jones v. Rogers, applying the ten-year statute оf limitations, and quoting what the court then observed in that regard, said that “this announcement was not necessary to the deсision in Jones v. Rogers, for the court had already held that the complainants in that case had deraigned no title.” And it will have been perceived that this writ of error runs to the judgment of the Supreme Court of October 22, 1906.
The result is, therefore, that this writ of error comes within the rule that where the disposition of a Federаl question was . not necessary to the determination of the cause and the judgment is based 6n a distinct ground or grounds broad enough to sustain it, over which this court has no jurisdiction, the writ of error cannot be maintained.
Writ of error dismissed.