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 fit for drying, and, at any rate, that the curculio would soon come and destroy them. Solid business men considered the prune business a visionary scheme, not worthy a serious consideration.
To verify our plums and prunes, in 1872, I ordered from August Bauman, 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 varieties—thus settling the matter of varieties beyond dispute. 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,
