Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/182

144 pied. Beneath the blue summer sky, through the tall wild grass that brushed their ankles, they rode to the home on La Creole. It was a lovely site, near the foothills of the purple Coast mountains, with snow peaks rising from the Cascades toward the east. Along the sparkling creek were great trees, the maple, the fir, the alder, the balm of Gilead.

Here and there on the highland were splendid oaks. "It was like a beautiful park," said Ellen, "quite free from underbrush." They used the log cabin that Mitchell Gilliam had erected and added to it as need demanded, bedrooms, a dining room, porches.

An agent for "Luellings Traveling Nursery" came by and Lyle took a number of fruit trees. That they flourished is evidenced by an entry in an old ledger used by W. C. Brown in his pioneer store. The entry is dated October 25, 1856. John Lyle is credited with three bushels of apples at $24.00.

The aged trees today blossom bravely and in the spring the old orchard is sweet with the fragrance of the flowering cherry, the plum, the pear and the apple. For more than seventy years those trees have fulfilled the cyle of bud and bloom, of ripened fruit and yellowed leaf. There one finds old favorites, the Golden Sweet, Gloria Mundi, Rambeau, Red June, Sweet June, the Damson Plum, the summer pear, the gourd pear, the pound pear, the Concord grape.

An old record relates that on May 9, 1851, a meeting of the county court was held at the residence of John E. Lyle, north of La Creole, and the members of that court were Harrison Linville, David R. Lewis and Thos. J. Lovelady; H. M. Waller was county clerk. At that meeting it was ordered that a court house two stories high be erected at Cynthian, (located where North Dallas now stands). The county donation square on which the court house was located is shown in the plat of the John E. Lyle homestead.