The St. Paul gentlemen who had been approached by Captain Dodd engaged me to go up the valley of the Minnesota river, and follow out all its tributaries, with the idea of reporting upon its general characteristics and prospects, with reference to the founding of a city at Rock Bend. I was delighted to do anything, or go anywhere, that promised work or adventure. It was to me what the Klondike has been to thousands recently. They furnished me with a good team, and away I went. It was in the winter, but I succeeded in reaching Traverse des Sioux, where I found a collection of Indian trading houses, where flourished Louis Roberts, Major Forbes, Nathan Myrick, Madison Sweetzer and others, who drove a trade with the Sioux. There was also at this point a missionary station, with a schoolhouse, a church, and a substantial dwelling house, occupied by the Rev. Moses N. Adams, who had been a missionary among the Sioux, having been transferred from the station at Lac qui Parle, where he had lived for many years, to this point. But the best find that I made was a young Scotchman by the name of Stuart B. Garvie, who had a shanty on the prairie about midway between Traverse des Sioux and my objective point, Rock Bend. I think that Garvie went up there from St. Anthony, under some kind of a promise from Judge Chatfield, that if ever the courts were organized in that region he would be made clerk. Garvie was delighted to discover me, and I being in search of information, we soon fraternized, and he agreed to go with me on my tour of exploration. We went up the Blue Earth, the Le Sueur, the Watonwan, and, in fact, visited all the country that was necessary to convince me that it was, by and large, a splendid agricultural region, and I decided so to report to my principals. When I was about to leave for down the river, Garvie insisted that I should return and take up my abode at Traverse des Sioux. The proposition seemed too absurd to me to be seriously entertained, and I said: "I am destitute of funds, and how can a lawyer subsist where there are no people? How can I get a living?" This dilemma, which seemed to me to be insuperable, was easily answered by my new found friend. "Why," he said, "That is the easiest part of it. We can hunt a living, and I have a shack and a bed." The proposition was catching, having a spice of adventure in it, and I promised to consider it. After making my report, in which I recommended Rock Bend as a promising place for a great city, I told the parties who proposed to purchase Captain Dodd's claim that I would confirm my faith in the success of the enterprise by returning and living at the point. I did so, and found myself farther west than any lawyer in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, unless he was in the panhandle of Texas. And now comes the singular way in which I made my first fee, if I may call it by that name. It was my first financial raise, no matter what you call it.