Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/20

 company and the American merchants. One writer estimated the company's stock in 1845 at 20,000 bushels, and that this was not half of the surplus. As many farmers reap from sixty to sixty-five bushels of wheat to the acre, and the poorest land returns twenty bushels, no great extent of sowing is required to furnish the market with an amount equal to that named. Agricultural machinery to any considerable extent is not yet known. Threshing is done by driving horses over the sheaves strewn in an enclosure, first trodden hard by the hoofs of wild cattle. In the summer of 1848 Wallace and Wilson of Oregon City construct two threshing-machines with endless chains, which are henceforward much sought after. The usual price of wheat, fixed by the Hudson's Bay Company, is sixty-two and a half cents; but at different times it has been higher, as in 1845, when it reached a dollar and a half a bushel, owing to the influx of population that year.

The flouring of wheat is no longer difficult, for there are in 1848 nine grist-mills in the country. Nor is it any longer impossible to obtain sawed lumber in the lower parts of the valley, or on the Columbia, for a larger number of mills furnish material for building to those who can afford to purchase and provide the means of transportation. The larger number of