APPENDIX. 179 



A DEAR SCHOOL. 



A TRIFLING CIRCUMSTANCE AND ITS RESULTS. 

 By Dr. J. K. Cakdwei.i., Portland. 



It was in August. 1853. in the little villao-e of Portland, we met our first 

 :surprise in the fruit product of Oreg^on. A small basket of peach-plums had 

 attracted a crowd of fruit-hungry admirers. They were handed out, five for 

 a quarter, the smallest change offered or accepted in pioneer days. 



Today you cannot understand the sensation of this occasion, or how, later, 

 the first boxes of Italian prunes on a country wagon collected a crowd of 

 merchants, clerks, and street people to the marketing, and how voraciously 

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

 was not considered. You cannot understand, for you were never young, a 

 thousand miles away -from home, in a new country, isolated, without trans- 

 portation, 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 appetizing, and 

 the melting, juicy pulp of the ripened fruit was enjoyed with a keen gusta- 

 tory satisfaction. 



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

 the little wild red plum, stung 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, yet with us, 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 t ree-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 

 cleared 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 commercial orchards of today. 

 My friends tell me I have the honor, if honor it be — questionable — of setting 

 the first commercial prune orchard on the coast. 



I was not alone ; the mania was infectious : seemingly nearly everybody 

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

 them. Much shrewder business men set orchards to plums — Meek & 

 Lewelling. George Walling, Seth Lewelling, and others ; later, P. F. Brad- 

 ford, Doctor Plummer. S. A. Clark, Dr. Blalock, and a multitude of or- 

 chardists. 



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 



