in a knowledge of the early history of the country. In the first place, the farming community of the country was derived originally from the border States, as they were thirty years ago. They had never been good farmers in the States of Missouri, Illinois, or Kentucky. Upon immigrating to Oregon they received a large body of land—too large to cultivate properly—with no adequate market for its productions, if they could or would work it. They consequently fell into the habit of raising a little grain indifferently well, of raising stock in the same manner, without caring to improve it materially; of living on what they could buy with the money obtained for what they had to sell—instead of producing butter, cheese, choice fruit, soap, candles, and a hundred things which the careful and thrifty farmer supplies himself with. Of course, this style of farming never improves itself, but constantly grows worse as the years accumulate. The buildings, fences, fields, and farming implements grow constantly more and more dilapidated, while their owners follow suit.
Some of the most beautiful portions of "Western Oregon are under this curse of bad stewardship. We have occasion to wonder, when the annual returns are made of so many bushels of grain raised, and so many boxes of fruit shipped, and so many head of fat cattle exported, that they are so many. It is because the country is very hard to spoil, that it suffers so little by mismanagement. Not that Polk County, which originated reflections of this sort, is the only, or the chief, offender. There are just as bad farmers to the north of it, and to the south; yet, that there must be some tolerably good ones, the reports of the State Agricultural Society prove beyond cavil.
