springs in that reageon that will be worth forty times what the Saratoga springs have been or ever will be. These with the wild and ruged scenery all around, with its thousands of other curiosities will make it one of the most fashionable resorts that you ever saw or heard of.
25th... We intend to go to Pugets Sound (if we ever get able), and we intend to start a nursery the first thing. We brought seads with us, and we have collected a great many since we have been here. It is the best business in the country, not hard, and will last for years. Mr. Lewelling I presume sold ten thousand Apple Trees or more last winter. They can be transplanted any time in the winter. He has every other kind of fruit that they rais in the states, and more, for he has Almonds and I think Figs. He has raised about five hundred bushels of Peaches, which he sels at SOcts. to $1.50 pr dozen. He has Apples, Peares, Quinces, Cherries, Plums &c &c., all the varieties that they have in the states, and far better. We would like to have you come out here and go into that business for I think it would pleas you, and it would not interfere with your raising stock making butter, Cheese &c., Butter is worth 5 & 6 bits pr pound, Cheese 4 bits, Milk $1. pr gallon, or 1 bit for a tumbler full, Flour is worth $10 pr hundred, Potatoes $1. and 1.25 pr bushel, Fresh Beef is to 22 cts. Pickeled Pork about 25 cts. How long these prices will remain is hard to tell, but I suppose as long as California will furnish gold for them. ...
I will just add here, that I heard a man say that he has seen a Potato that weighed 11 pounds, the same man said also that there is a Rootabaga back of this a mile or two that covers a diameter of 5 feet with its leaves. I have seen Potatoes at Bakers Bay that were full as large as my fist and the tops just beginning to blossom, and the root too green to eat. What they will come to is hard to tell. The Steamer Columbia[1] came in
to Portland this morning early, with the mail and the Steamer
- ↑ The Columbia was built in New York in 1850 for the California and Oregon trade. She was described in her enrollment at the Astoria custom house, as having a “round stern and eagle head;" Lewis and Dryden, Marine History of the Pacific Northwest, 35.
