seen as many as would load a wagon piled up after a game, some of
them ten or twelve feet long. They were called in those days bull
snakes, and were considered of the constrictor species, but not
venomous.

MAKING A POST OFFICE.

I had settled on the frontier, where Traverse des Sioux and Mankato were
the extreme border towns in southwestern Minnesota. About the year 1854
or 1855 a German settlement was commenced at New Ulm. It originated in
Cincinnati, with an association which sent out parties to find a site
for a town, and they selected the present site of New Ulm. The lands had
not been surveyed by the general government, but our delegate in
congress, Henry M. Rice, had anticipated that by obtaining the passage
of the law allowing settlement and preemption on unsurveyed lands. Under
the law a town site could only embrace 320 acres, but the projectors of
New Ulm laid out an immense tract, comprising thousands of acres. Many
of the settlers had not taken any steps toward becoming American
citizens, which was a necessary preliminary to preemption, and
everything among them was held in a kind of common interest, the
Cincinnati society furnishing the funds.

It was not long before they discovered that they needed legal advice in
their venture, and called on me to regulate their matters for them. I
was deputy clerk of the court, and always carried the seal and
naturalization papers with me, so that I could take the declaration of
intention of anyone who desired to become an American citizen anywhere I
happened to find him, on the prairie or elsewhere. In this way I
qualified many of the Germans for preemption, and took them by the
steamboat load down to Winona to enter their lands. I would be furnished
with a large bag of gold to pay for the lands, and sometimes, with the
special conveniences furnished by the land office, I would work off
forty or fifty preemptions in a day. I became such a necessary factor in
the building of the town that, if any difficulty occurred, even in the
running of a mill which they erected and ran by the accumulated water of
many large springs, I was immediately sent for to remedy the evil.

The nearest postoffice was at Fort Ridgely, about sixteen miles away,
and it soon became apparent that one ought to be established in the
town. I was, of course, sent for to see if it could be accomplished. It
was a very easy thing to do with the very efficient and influential
delegate we had in