Appendix. 131 



voraciously they were eaten out of hand on the spot. The price, though 

 extravagant, was not considered. You can not understand, for you 

 were never young a thousand miles away from home, in a new country, 

 isolated, without transportation, and without fruit. The peach-plums 

 referred to were highly colored, large, and beautiful, as we know them 

 in Oregon, but then they looked much larger and more beautiful, the 

 aroma was most apetizing, and the melting, juicy pulp of the ripened 

 fruit- was enjoyed with a keen gustatory satisfaction. 



In our distant home in the West, then as far out as Illinois, we only 

 knew the little wild, red plum, stving by the curculio, and wormy. We 

 boys ate them at the risk of the worms, which we no doubt often ate 

 with the plum. -The cultivated domestic plum had not been introduced; 

 we had never seen it, scarcely heard of it, hence the surprise. 



Citizen P. W. Gillette was then a nurseryman, near Astoria, and had 

 imported from his father's nursery in Ohio a fine stock of fruits and 

 ornamentals. It was in 1855 I made my first considerable order, and I 

 have been ordering and setting trees ever since, as I have been told I 

 ■"had the tree-setting craze, and had it bad." In the sober reflections 

 of the present I must acknowledge it was true. I had to set trees. For 

 many years I cleai'ed our heavy timber land, and set out ten acres a 

 year. Moderately speaking, I have set over two hundred acres in trees 

 — not a large orchard now. The time had not come for the large com- 

 mercial orchards of to-day. 



I was not alone; the mania was infectious; seemingly nearly every- 

 body was setting fruit trees and plums; the front yards and the back 

 yards of the towns had them. Shrewd business men set orchards to 

 plums — Meek & Luelling, George Walling, Seth Lewelling, and others; 

 later, P. F. Bradford, Dr. O. P. S. Plummer, S. A. Clarke, Dr. N. G. 

 Blalock, and a multitude of others too numerous to mention. 



It was not until 1871 I put out twelve hundred peach-plum trees. 

 There was then a great demand for large pitted plums in the Eastern 

 market, and our grocerymen called for them in considerable quantities at 

 home, and often said to me: "Set out pitting plums and peach-plums, 

 and don't set anything you can not pit, for the American people don't 

 want a prune with the pit in it. They don't like them." A few of our 

 large-pitted plums had reached the St. Louis mai'ket, and were selling 

 readily at 35 cents per pound. We figured two hundred pounds to the 

 tree, then thought to be a conservative estimate, one hundred and sixty 

 trees to the acre, and forty acres in plums, at 15 cents a pound, dried. 

 This was good, better than a quartz mine; divided by two it seemed 

 good enough. Time passed. Market reports East showed active demand 

 for pitted plums. Leading wholesale grocers ordered, and said we neel 

 not fear an over-supply of plums as per sample sent, and that there 

 was nothing so fine on the market. We sold at 16 cents per pound, 

 and were assured that they could not drop much below that price. 



A correspondent, a grower, Mr. S. J. Brandon, of New York, ha 1 

 discovered, or thought he had, that a heavy clay soil, very like our 



