Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/86

 74 John Minto. there, but was too early. Clearing ground, opening the coal seams and ore beds, squaring timbers and erecting buildings, were the kinds of work required. The Americans of the dis- trict could beat the English, Scots, or Welsh at such jobs. I saw the wonderful flight of the passenger pigeons here. The five days I was there I saw the passage of flocks in hurried flight, each day and all day, in countless numbers. They must have come from immense bodies of mast-bearing forest which had been destroyed and the pigeons had to dis- appear with its destruction. As grasshopper plagues cease with the cultivation of the land— being compelled to migrate —so was it with the pigeons. There were still some wild deer and turkeys in this valley of the Alleghany within fifty miles of Pittsburg. But farms were small, as there were stone, timber and brushwood in the way of the plow. The largest trees were often killed where they stood by "girdling"— cut- ting through the sapwood all around the tree. There was no thought of timber famine and little attention to trees as ob- jects of beauty. To remove the obstacles in the shape of brush and young trees up to six inches in diameter, and to girdle the remaining trees, was worth acre for acre of the land so cleared. The writer refused a contract for clearing fifty acres on those terms, with five years' time allowed for performing the con- tract. The offer was made by an honorable man entirely re- sponsible. I made a journey into Canada West (now Ontario) to search for kindred arriving in 1818. The clearing of land was going on on the American side seemingly as fast as men could find means for it ; but it was hard times and wages for such work very low. In Canada I found wages low also and the em- ployers more exacting. The slaughtering of timber by throw- ing trees into windrows was done with great skill. To get a successful fire to consume as much as possible of the fallow— as it was called— was also a matter of skill. Clearing land seemed more active than farming it, although I noted some