Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/153

 From Youth to Age as an American. 135 served a native thorn in Oregon. With a Fall Butter from thorn stock I received first prize at the first exhibit of the Oregon Pomological Society held at Salem. I head-grafted the small, bitter wild cherry with Kentish and May Duke, and got fruit the second year, and heavy crops the third. Just to show it could be done, I set grafts of the Gloria Mundi apple into the native crab, the apples of which are not larger than a raisin, though the Glory of the Earth sometimes reached thirty ounces in weight. But while exploring this field and its almost boundless pos- sibilities, I went down as well as up in my observations, and learned the secret of fern seed— how it starts from a small speck of reddish dust and covers a recent forest-fire area with fern three feet high after the first year,* and learned the pro- creative processes of the misletoe— the sacred plant of the Druids. I also learned to tell my discoveries to others with the pen. I sold my first crop of apples and pears on the trees at 14 cents per pound— the buyer picking, weighing and packing in boxes with dry moss to prevent movement, as they were hauled by six-mule teams to Yreka mining camps, in California— the Seckel pears bringing $4.00 per pound. My second and third apple crops were sold to the late J. M. Strowbridge at 10 and 12 cents per pound, packed in seasoned balm-wood boxes, and hauled to West Portland by way of Boone 's Ferry. I had the care of this 640-acre farm, stocked with horses, cattle, swine and sheep and seventeen acres planted to orchard, comprising the choicest varieties of apples, pears, peaches, cherries, plums and small fruits. These and the sheep gave me occupation and means of advancing in knoAvledge far more appreciated than the money they sold for, which was ample for our needs. From the end of my first year of ownership I found that Carnahan. A short distance up the Klaskanie a burn had killed a body of timber in 1848. His mention of seedling fern made me desire to see it. On the shaded sides of burnt logs were strips of light green. It was fern with its first fronds four to six inches high and a root on each side. In il854 fern was four to six feet high and hid cattle.
 * In 1849 I was at what is now Olney with its first settler, Hiram