DR. J. R. CARDWELL. 19 



five for a quarter, the smallest change offered or accepted 

 in pioneer days. 



To-day you can not 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 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 re- 

 ferred 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 gustatory 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 sur- 

 prise. 



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 cleared our 

 heavy timber land, and set out ten acres a year. Moder- 

 ately 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 to-day. 



