Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/159

 From Youth to Age as an American. 141 and which gave almost a complete bird's-eye view of the half section allotted to my wife. Facing east, we had on my side a beautiful aspen grove in the northeast corner, inclosing a beaver pond, varying in size from a half acre in summer to two acres in winter. On the southeast corner, Battle Creek ran into a beaver swamp of fifty acres or more in winter, but shrinking to a pond of about three acres in summer. Both of these were natural duck ponds, and until late summer the fringes of Avillow, ash, alder, aspen and green grass made breeding grounds for ducks, snipe, curlew, woodcock, plover and crane, and the deer hid their fawns in the tall, ferny outer margin. From Beaver Hill, so called by the Indians because of its form, we could see almost her entire south line, the southwest corner containing the five acres of good building timber, mostly not half grown. We were talking of the necessity of providing for more timber, and looking at the steep hillside across the valley of Battle Creek from us, when I noticed numerous dark spots in the whitish, bleached seed- grass of the hillside. We were speculating about that when two or three sows came in sight, running from one oak tree to another, feeding. Judging that they were some of the more than half- wild swine which Mr. Carter had given me as an inducement to take care of his family and farm during his absence in California, I asked my wife to remain there while I ran across the valley, about half a mile, to see if the sows were in my mark. Before getting to them I found that the dark spots we had noted were young firs showing out of the past year's seed-grass. The pigs were mine also, and I joined my wife feeling richer, with reference to our future timber supply. For years after our settlement I got most of our fuel from fallen limbs of very large and old oaks dead or dying from age. In many cases the bark and sap wood was burned off, and the remainder made splendid house fires. It was about 1857 when a stranger, who had asked for a night's enter- tainment for himself and his horse, sat before such a fire and gave me the first hint of the error into which my love