320 An American Fruit-Farm 



These pioneers did a greater work than Hercules : 

 they planted the seeds of a civilization which bears 

 fruit unto this day. They found the Valley as 

 La Salle, Celeron, and Father Hennepin saw it, and 

 began the transformation that is going on to this 

 day. The Valley as we see it was not made in a 

 day. We have cleared away remainders and ves- 

 tiges of the primeval woods ; we have drained wet 

 places, built roads, houses, and bams; we have 

 changed pasture lands to wheat fields, wheat fields 

 into orchards and vineyards, and where yesterday 

 the wild deer was speeding like the wind, to-day is a 

 sweep of cherry blossoms. This we did with cun- 

 ning tools and help of many hands; that they did 

 with slow and painful toil, grubbing through the 

 tall, thick woods, burning the forest to get rid of it, 

 and paying for their land with the pearl-ash which 

 they hauled in mid-winter, over a wilderness road 

 to Pittsburgh or to Barcelona, where, getting a 

 few pieces of silver they made their titles secure. 

 And one acre of this land which they cleared with 

 such lengthening toil is to-day worth, as the world 

 says, more than a thousand acres of the days 

 of pioneering. They labored and we enjoy; they 

 toiled for us who come more than a century after. 

 Their age was our youth; they built the ship and 

 began the voyage, and we are making port. 



Generations to come will speak of our labor as 

 vast, astonishing, Herculean, and will carry our 

 busts in their funeral processions. Yet in the 

 Valley — ^possibly in other valleys — ^few old men 



