54 THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 



colonies on the eastern coast were fighting for their independence. To 

 these they brought the cultivated plants of Europe and among them the 

 pear. Vancouver, in 1792, found all of the hardy fruits growing at Santa 

 Clara and the mission of San Buena Ventura, California. Robinson, a 

 little later, describes extensive orchards connected with the mission of 

 San Gabriel in which there were pears in abundance. In 1846, Edwin 

 Bryant found at the mission of San Jose six hundred pear-trees bearing 

 fruit in great abundance and full perfection. The missions were secularized 

 in 1834, an d the orchards fell into decay. But the pear and the vine 

 withstood neglect, drouth, and the browsing of cattle to furnish food to 

 the Argonauts of '49. But little came of these early plantings that affects 

 the present industry of growing pears in California either as to methods 

 of culture or the introduction of new varieties. 



As an example of the remarkable recuperative power of the pear, 

 however, the orchard which Bryant described in 1846 at the San Gabriel 

 Mission is noteworthy. An enterprising pioneer, W. M. Stockton, grafted 

 over the old orchard in 1854 to improved varieties, and by pruning, cultiva- 

 tion, and irrigation succeeded in rejuvenating it so that the orchard became 

 a profitable commercial plantation — the first commercial pear orchard in 

 California. There are other instances given in the early accounts of 

 fruit-growing in California in which the youth of old pear-trees was renewed 

 by generous treatment, showing that the pear in a congenial soil and climate 

 is most self-assertive in maintaining life. It could hardly be otherwise 

 than that the health and vigor of these old trees stimulated the planting 

 of fruits by the gold-seekers who rushed to this region in 1849. 



Meanwhile, orcharding had been established as an avocation. In the 

 rich Willamette Valley in Oregon, where the growing of wheat and cattle 

 was the vocation, the plantations of hardy fruits made by Henderson 

 Lewelling, near Portland, Oregon, in 1847, included pears and marked the 

 beginning of pear-culture in Oregon. Lewelling's venture, so pregnant 

 with results in pomology for the Pacific Northwest, has been described in 

 The Cherries of New York, and needs no detailed description here. It is 

 mentioned only to call attention to it as another landmark in the history 

 of the pear. 



The padres began the cultivation of the pear at the missions. The 

 pioneers of '47 in Oregon and '49 in California started a new era in the 

 cultivation of this and other tree-fruits by introducing named and improved 

 varieties and extending their cultivation along the coast from British 



