18 FIRST FRUITS OF THE LAND. 



claiming that our prunes were not the true German and 

 Italian prunes, and that the prune in this country would, 

 as they had in Eastern States, degenerate into a worthless, 

 watery plum not n't for drying, and, at any rate, that the 

 curculio would soon come and destroy them. Solid busi- 

 ness men considered the prune business a visionary 

 scheme, not worthy a serious consideration. 



To verify our plums and prunes, in 1872, 1 ordered from 

 August Baurnan, of Bolwiler on the Rhine, one of the 

 largest and most reliable nurserymen in Germany, scions 

 of fourteen varieties of plums and prunes. These came 

 by express at a cost of $11 per package. After five orders 

 and five packages in various shapes had been received in 

 worthless condition, the sixth package enveloped in oil 

 silk and hermetically sealed in a tin can, came in good 

 order. These were grafted on bearing trees, and the third' 

 year bore fruit. The Italian prune, German prune, the 

 Petite d'Agen, Coe's Golden Drop, and all other varieties 

 just such fruit as we had been growing for these va- 

 rieties thus settling the matter of varieties beyond dis- 

 pute. Whereupon, from 1871 to 1881, I set eighty acres 

 to orchard near Portland ; six thousand prunes and plums, 

 one thousand Royal Ann and Black Republican cherries, 

 fifteen hundred Bartlett pears, five hundred Winter Nellis, 

 and other pears and winter apples. 



This, I am told, was the first commercial prune orchard 

 on the coast. In 1876 I built a three-ton box drier, dried 

 several tons of pitted peach-plums, sold at sixteen, cents 

 per pound in fifty-pound boxes. The first yield of prunes 

 dried in 1876 brought twelve cents and for some years did 

 not drop below nine cents. 



It was in August, 1853, in the then little village of 

 Portland, we met our first surprise in the fruit product of 

 Oregon. A small basket of peach-plums had attracted a 

 crowd of fruit-hungry admirers. They were handed out, 



