[Illustration: The Dalles, on the Columbia River.]
IT was the fourteenth of March when I drove out of The Dalles to make the long overland journey. By rail, it is 1734 miles from The Dalles to Omaha, where our work of marking the old trail was to end. By wagon road the distance is greater, but not much greater--probably 1800 miles.
The load was very heavy, and so were the roads. With a team untrained to the road and one of the oxen unbroken, with no experienced ox driver to assist me, and the grades heavy, small wonder if a feeling of depression crept over me. On some long hills we could move only a few rods at a time, and on level roads, with the least warm sun, the unbroken ox would poke out his tongue.
We were passing now through the great farming district of eastern Oregon. The desert over which we had dragged ourselves in those long-ago days has been largely turned into great wheat fields. As we drew into camp one night a young man approached, driving eight harnessed horses. He told me that he had harrowed in thirty-five acres of wheat that day, and that it was just a common day's work to plow seven acres of land.
Where a wheat farm of today has taken the place of the unbroken prairie in eastern Oregon.]
I recalled my boyhood days when father spoke approvingly if I plowed two acres a day, and when to harrow ten acres was the biggest kind of a day's work. I also recalled the time when we cut the wheat with a sickle, or maybe with a hand cradle, and threshed it out with horses on the barn floor. Sometimes we had a fanning mill, and how it would make my arms ache to turn the crank! At other times, if a stiff breeze sprang up, the wheat and chaff would be shaken loose and the chaff would be blown away. If all other means failed, two stout arms at either end of a blanket or a sheet would move the sheet as a fan to clean the wheat. Now we see the great combination harvester garner thirty acres a day, and thresh it as well and sack it ready for the mill or warehouse. There is no shocking, no stacking or housing: all in one operation, the grain is made ready for market.
In spite of the wide-spreading farms and fruit orchards, there are still forests in Washington and Oregon, and lumbering is still a great industry.]