This was the only political trick I remember of having perpetrated on the enemy during my long participation in active politics, and I don't believe any of my readers will regard it as transgressing the proverb that "all is fair in love or war." My friend Lynd was, like most of the characters in my frontier experience, killed by the Indians in the outbreak of 1862. THE HARDSHIPS OF EARLY LAW PRACTICE. Prior to 1855 the public lands of Minnesota were unsurveyed, and no title could be acquired to them. About that time, however, four United States land districts were established, with a land office in each of them. The districts were straight tracts of country extending from the Mississippi due west to the Missouri, the exterior lines of which were parallel to each other. The offices were at Brownsville, Winona, Red Wing and Minneapolis. I was then living in Traverse des Sioux, which place, together with Mankato, fell within the Winona district, so that any land business we had in our region of the country compelled a trip to Winona, a distance of nearly three hundred miles by water, or one hundred and fifty by land. After the closing of the rivers by winter there was no other way of getting there except to journey across the country. At the time I refer to there was little or no settlement between Traverse des Sioux and Winona, and no roads. I remember that there were one or two settlers on the Straight river, where now stands Owatonna, and about the same number on the Zumbro, where now is Rochester, and one house at a point called Utica, about fifty miles west of Winona, and a small settlement at Stockton, on a trout stream which flows through the bluffs a few miles west of Winona. The latter place, being on the Mississippi and easy of access, was quite a flourishing town. That fall I had been elected to the upper house of the territorial legislature, called the council, and the news reached us that there would be a contested seat in the council from some district in the southern part of the territory, but we had no particulars as to the locality or the person, and gave the matter very little attention.