This is an action of ejectment, commenced in the district court of St. Louis county, in the state of Minnesota, to recover certain lands in that county, described in the complaint. The trial was by the court, and judgment was entered for the defendant, which was affirmed by the supreme court of Minnesota, and the plaintiff has sued out this writ of error to review that judgment. 87 Minn. 97, 91 N. W. 304.
The following facts (among others) were found by the trial court:
'1. The plaintiff is a corporation duly organized and existing under the laws of the state of Minnesota, and the defendants are husband and wife.
'2. In 1876, township fifty-seven north of range seventeen west, in St. Louis county, Minnesota, was ordered by the General Land Office of the United States to be surveyed, and a contract for the survey thereof was made by the United States surveyor general of the state of Minnesota with one H. S. Howe, who, by said contract, was constituted a deputy United States surveyor for said purpose. Under said contract said Howe was required, and undertook and agreed, to survey said township, to run out all section lines, and to set posts marking all section and quarter section corners throughout said township where the same could be marked upon the ground, and accurately to meander and establish upon the ground meander posts of all lakes and streams found to exist within said township.
'3. Thereafter said Howe ran and marked the exterior lines of said township, except the south township line, which had been previously surveyed, and set posts at all section and quarter section corners on said three exterior lines. He also set a meander post upon the north line of said township as surveyed by him, where said line running west from the northeast corner of said township first encountered the shore of Ely lake, or, as it is sometimes called, Cedar Island lake.
'4. No survey of the interior of said township was ever made, and no section lines within said township were ever run by said Howe, with the possible exception of the west line of section 36 thereof, and no section or quarter section corners were ever located, established, or marked by him (with the possible exception of the northwest corner of section 36 aforesaid), and none of the streams or permanent lakes (of which there were several) within said township were meandered by him, and no posts of any description were ever set, nor any lines or bearing trees ever blazed, within said township, with the possible exception of a corner post at the northwest corner of said section 36.
'5. Said Howe made and filed with the United States surveyor general of the state of Minnesota what purported to be field notes of a survey of said township made by him under said contract, purporting to give the length and directions of all interior section lines in said township, the location of all sections and quarter section posts, and the bearing trees thereof, the character of the soil and timber in said township, and all other data and information required by the statutes of the United States and the rules of the United States General Land Office to be ascertained and reported by deputy surveyors in due course of making surveys of public lands.
'6. With the exception of the description of the survey of the three exterior boundary lines of said township actually run by him, said field notes returned by said Howe were imaginary and fictitious, and the purported facts and data contained therein were not based upon any personal knowledge or inspection of the interior of said township, and were, in fact, false and erroneous.
'7. From said purported field notes it appears that there existed in the northerly part of said township, lying in sections 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, and 11 thereof, a lake known as Ely lake, or Cedar Island lake, with surface area, as indicated in said field notes, of 1,800 acres; in fact, instead of having an area of about 1,800 acres, said lake then was and still is a body of water not exceeding 800 acres in area. It is a permanent, deep, and navigable lake, having high, steep, and heavily timbered banks, except about the outlet thereof. Said lake does not, in fact, touch section 11 at all, and covers only an area of very small extent (less than one half of a 40-acre tract) in the southeast corner of section 4. Between the actual water line of said lake and the meander line thereof, as returned by the purported field notes of said Howe, there were, at the time of the survey, and still are, at least 1,000 acres of high, tillable land, which has never been a part of the lake, and which was and is heavily timbered with trees of more than a century's growth and growing down to the water's edge.