THIRTY-THIRD BIENNIAL SESSION 
99 
northern soil? In this act of transplanting was illustrated the world’s hunger 
for the fruit of the vine and tree so beautifully illustrated by Whittier’s poem 
beginning with these lines: 
“The wild grape by the river side 
And tasteless groundnut trailing low; 
The table of the woods supplied.” 
The old Puritans could not have been such terribly stem and uncom- 
promising foes of the good things of life after all, since they knew enough 
to find gustatory delight in such fruit as kind mother nature provided for 
them in their exile. 
Fruit culture is the most fascinating and ennobling as well as the most 
profitable branch of horticulture, and the increased esteem in which the fruit 
product is held is evidence of the culture and civilization of a people. It is 
hard to overestimate the beneficial influence on health, morals and manners 
of a generous fruit supply. The ornamental grounds, orchards and homestead 
do much in childhood to strengthen that love of home and pride of family 
which is the foundation of all patriotism. The cherished memories of home 
thus enriched are in after life the strongest bond of family to bring back 
the absent and wandering to the rooftree, and the erring one is not wholly 
lost as long as these sacred memories of home and childhood sometimes 
come to swell the heart and dim the eye with repentance and contrition. 
Luelling’s Ox-Team Nursery. 
In the summer of 1847 Mr. Henderson Luelling, of Iowa, brought across 
the plains several hundred yearling grafted sprouts, apple, pear, cherry, plum, 
prune, peach, grape and berries, — a full assortment of all the fruits grown 
in the then far west. These were placed in soil in two large boxes, made 
to fit into a wagon bed, and carefully watered and tended on the long and 
hazardous six months’ journey with an ox team, thousands of miles to the 
Willamette valley, near Portland. Here a little patch in the dense fir forest 
was cleared away with great labor and expense, and that autumn the first 
nursery and orchard was set, with portent more significant for the luxury 
and civilization of this country than any laden ship that ever entered the 
mouth of the Columbia river. A fellow traveler, William Meek, had also 
brought a sack of apple seed and a few grafted trees. A partnership was 
formed and the firm of Luelling and Meek entered upon the work of sup- 
plying grafted fruit trees and vines for this region. Roots from seedling 
apples planted at Oregon City and on French Prairie; sprouts from the wild 
cherry growing in the vicinity, and wild plum roots brought from the Rogue 
River valley, furnished the first stock. And it is related that one root graft 
in the nursery the first year bore a big red apple, and so great was the fame 
of it, and such the curiosity of the people that men, women and children came 
from miles around to see it, and made a hard beaten track through the 
nursery to the joyous reminder of the old homestead so far away. 
People in those days, in this sparsely settled country knew what their 
neighbors were doing, and in the fall of 1848 and spring of 1849 men came 
