Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/259

REMINISCENCES OF SEVENTY YEARS 251 prairie and one 80-acre lot of timber two miles off. We moved right on the place, made a sod house, hired a lot of men, all good choppers, and one good hewer. Paid seventy-five cents for the choppers each and one dollar for the hewer per day and board. In a few weeks, we had up a big hewed log house a story and a half high. We had two rooms twenty feet square with a twelve-foot entry between them. It was the finest house in the county and a good house when we left for Oregon in 1845. We broke, fenced and had more land in cultivation in one year than we could have had in Indiana in ten years with the same help. We remained on that place until March 30, 1845. Had been there nine years but only raised eight crops. But never got two good wheat crops during that time. Oats and corn were always good, but prices were poor, ten cents a bushel for oats and twelve and a half for corn, and that in store pay. Pork brought from a dollar and a half to two and a half a hundred pounds, but that always brought cash; cash money had to be paid for taxes. We came out about even every year, though we were never in debt. We were all about grown now ; had lost one brother, Eli, the brightest one of the family. We could sell out now and make fine outfit for Oregon. We could have laid out a thousand dollars for young cattle, which would have made us a fortune in Oregon, but the old gent thought he would better keep his money than take chances by the stock being run off by the Indians. March 30th, 1845, arrived. Well, now we are off for Ore- gon, the land of sundown. We had four wagons, four yoke of oxen to one wagon and three to each of the others. They were all young, well-broken cattle, and could trot like horses. With wagons loaded light, they could walk off twenty-five or thirty miles a day easy. People came from far and near to bid us a last farewell, as they said. We had enough for an army of well-drilled soldiers to undertake without helpless women and children. Our outfit had a good effect, for in '47 there were quite a number came from that neighborhood. The Grimes and Geers came first, as they said they would follow us soon.