conducted the case. Mr. Waite was a member of the constitutional convention, and has served in the state legislature for several terms, besides holding the office of register of the United States Land Office at this place.

Among the other Territorial residents of St. Cloud are Thomas C. Alden, who in 1856 opened the first loan and banking office in the place, his wife (then Miss Talcott) being the teacher of the first school; John H. Raymond and F. H. Dam, manufacturers; W. T. Clarke, builder; John Schwartz, saddler; Lewis Clark, machinist; Levi L. Ball, Thomas Jones, M. P. Noel, and William Holes. The list is not a long one and is steadily growing less.

The first Protestant church society organized was the Baptist, which was organized in the winter of 1855-6 by Deacon Cram, one of the pioneers whose influence for good in those early days was strongly felt. The meetings were held in a small frame building in lower town, near the river front, which has long since disappeared. Of the ten original members, but two, J. E. West and Mrs. Mary J. Spicer, remain.

In the spring of 1858 a party of Ojibway Indians came from their reservation on the upper Mississippi on their way to attack the Sioux on the Minnesota river. They camped in front of the Stearns House, on what is now a part of the campus of the State Normal School, and danced their war dance, to the monotonous pounding of their drums. Among these almost naked warriors were some as fine specimens of physical manhood as I ever saw. They returned soon afterwards with a bunch of Sioux scalps, but made their homeward journey on the east side of the river so that we did not see them again. It was only on rare occasions that an Indian was seen in the place, the half-breeds being more frequent visitors.

An important event in those days was the coming each spring of the long trains of Red River carts, loaded with the Hudson Bay Company's furs. These carts were constructed without iron, the wheels being without tires, and the other parts being held together by wooden pegs and thongs of hide. As they made the trips in good condition the work, however rudely done, must have been well done. They were drawn by a single ox provided with something approaching a regular harness, and the dreary creak

ings which sounded the approach of the long procession told that axle grease was an article wholly unknown in those far northern regions. The drivers were half-breeds, and the journey, coming and going, occupied many weeks. At first these trains went on through to St. Paul; later, when the present Great Northern railway had reached St. Cloud, which was its terminus for a time, the carts unloaded here; but with the construction of the railroad further westward their visits ceased altogether. Those were the days when buffalo robes of the best quality, which are now a very expensive rarity, could be had for a few dollars..

The second bridge to span the upper Mississippi river was that built in 1856 at Watab, about eight miles north of St. Cloud. It was built for Stephen Emerson and John L. Young, the proprietors of a town-site on the west side of the river, intended to be a rival to Watab. The bridge was all completed with the exception of the timbers being bolted to the piers, when one night a strong wind lifted the superstructure off its supports and dropped it into the river. So quietly was it all done, however, that the man in the toll-house was not aware of what had happened until the next morning. The superstructure was never replaced, and the piers stood in the river for many years, until finally torn and worn away by the impact of the logs and ice. The hopes and prospects of these enterprising speculators disappeared with their bridge, and the town-site on which they had ventured so much is only a thing of paper and the past. One of the builders of this bridge was Lewis Clark, then a resident of Watab, but soon afterward coming to this city, which is still his home.

It is only as one recalls those early days, when Dubuque was the nearest railroad point, when the country to the west and northwest was almost without a settler, when pork and beans were the staff of life and dried-apple pie a luxury, when the mercury was at home at 30 to 50 degrees below zero during most of the winter months, when one hundred days of sleighing was the minimum,it is only when things such as these are brought to mind that one can at all appreciate the tremendous changes which have taken place since the territorial days and the prosperous conditions which. exist in Minnesota today.

BOUNDARIES AND PUBLIC LAND SURVEYS OF

MINNESOTA.*

BY NATHAN BUTLER.

The history of the surveys made by the United States government in the state of Minnesota properly embraces the exterior boundaries of the state, the survey and subdivision of all the public lands within these boundaries, and the topographical survey that is now being made under the direction of the Geological and Geodetic Survey of the United States.

The last named survey, however, begun here only in a few tracts of quite limited extent, as for the map sheets comprising St. Paul and Minneapolis, Lake Minnetonka, Lake Itasca, the Interstate Park at the Dalles of the St. Croix river, etc., I leave undescribed, with only this brief mention.

BOUNDARIES OF MINNESOTA.

The boundaries of the state are thus described in the Enabling Act passed February 26th, 1857:

Beginning at the point in the center of the main channel of the Red River of the North, where the boundary line between the United States and the British possessions crosses the same; thence up the main channel of said river to that of the Bois des Sioux River; thence up the main channel of said river to Lake Traverse; thence up the center of said lake to the southern extremity thereof; thence in a direct line to the head of Big Stone lake; thence through its center to its outlet; thence by a due south line to the north line of the State of Iowa; thence along the northern boundary of said state to the main channel of the Mississippi river; thence up the main channel of said river, and following the boundary line of the State of Wisconsin, until the same intersects with the St. Louis river; thence down the said river to and through Lake Superior, on the boundary line of Wisconsin and Michigan, until it intersects the dividing line *Read at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council, April 8, 1907.