Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/284

 276 WILLIAM BARLOW next morning Eaton and myself started back. Eaton was the man's name that went with me over the mountains. We had a harder trip going back than we did going over heavily loaded. There came on a blinding snowstorm and our matches got wet so we had to resort to an old flintlock gun and that flashed in the pan several times ; but finally we got a fire started, set an old dead tree on fire that lit up the mountains in fine shape, so we could find our horses, as they had wandered off in the dark. We, never could have found them if we had failed to get a fire, and I really believe we would have frozen to death, as we had left our best blankets back with Berry. So much for that trip. In dead of winter we got back to Oregon City. The next thing to do was to find something to do, as I never could be idle. I bought a squatter's right to a section of land up on the Clackamas River.. It cost me a young American filly valued at $250.00. I went right on the place, hired a man, and went to work, preparing a place to plant out a peck of apple seeds that I had brought over the plains and packed out on horseback from our mountain cache whence I had just returned. And right here I will state that I let an independent fortune slip through my hands. I had started from Illinois with a complete assortment of the best grafted fruit trees that Illinois could produce, and they were all growing and doing well. I could have got them through in good shape, but I met a lot of men from Oregon who were good intelligent men. I think Jason Lee was one of them. I showed him my young trees that were in a box that weighed about 300 pounds, dirt and all. "What are you going to do with them when you get them there?" one said. "I am going into the nursery business/' I replied. "My dear sir," they said, "there is as good fruit in Oregon as anywhere in the world. There are old bearing orchards at Vancouver and in the French prairie, and you have the hardest part of the road ahead of you, besides you cannot get your