Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/36

30 I visited these seedling trees, now eighty years old, hoary chroniclers of time, yet showing a vigorous growth. Mrs. Gay Hayden, of Vancouver, informed me she had eaten fruit from these trees for fifty-four years. The fruit is not large, but of fair quality. Fortunately Government does not allow a tree to be removed or destroyed without an order from the department. Capt. Nathaniel Wyeth, in his diary of 1835, speaks of having grafted trees on his place, Fort William, on Wapatoo Island, now called Sauvies' Island. Grafts and stock must have come from the Sandwich Islands, then the nearest point to the cultivated fruits which early missionaries had brought to these islands. As Captain Wyeth left the country soon after, we have no record of his success with these fruits. As Indians and trappers had little care for trees or cultivated fruits, this venture can not be considered in any historical record of the introduction of grafted fruit in Oregon.

The Hudson Bay Company introduced the first cultivated rose, as early as 1830, a pink rose, with the attar of rose aroma. An occasional Hudson Bay rose may yet be seen in the old yards in Oregon City and at Vancouver. It is sometimes called the Mission rose. Miss Ella Talbot, on Talbot Hill, just South of Portland Heights, has one more than forty years old. The Biddle rose—the Chinese Daly—1852, probably the second importation. The Gillette rose, 1853, the third and most valuable, is now widely distributed. The cut-leaved Evergreen blackberry came from the Sandwich Islands. I first saw it early in the fifties, covering a thirty-foot trellis in the dooryard of J. B. Stevens—"Uncle Jimmie Stevens," as he was known. From him I learned that it came from the Sandwich Islands, reported to be a native of one of the South Sea islands. One of the Feejee islands is covered with it. Seth Lewelling originated the Lewelling, the Black Republican, and the Bing cherries, in the sixties. The Bing