Thompson of Lane County, and Senator S. C. Thompson, Jr., of Wasco, then
boys of 12 and 14 years, went back and cared for the grain. The wheat
was cut with a cradle, bound into bundles and stacked. A piece of ground
was then cleared, the grain laid down on the "tramping floor" and oxen
driven around until the grain was all tramped out. After the grain was
all "threshed out," it was carried on top of a platform built of rails
and poured out on a wagon sheet, trusting to the wind to separate the
wheat kernels from the straw and chaff. By this primitive method the
crop was harvested, threshed, cleaned, and then sacked. It was then
hauled by ox teams to Albany where a small burr mill had been erected by
a man named Monteith, if my memory serves me correctly, and then ground
to flour.

And then, joy of joys! We had wheat bread. No more boiled wheat, nor
flour ground in a coffee mill,--but genuine wheat bread. You, reader,
who probably never ate a meal in your life without bread, have little
conception of the deliciousness of a biscuit after the lapse of a year.
As Captain Applegate once said to the writer, referring to the first
wheat bread he ever remembered eating: "No delicacy,--no morsel of food
ever eaten in after life tasted half so delicious as that bread." It
must be remembered that Captain Applegate crossed the plains in 1843 and
was therefore an "old settler" when we arrived. His trials were
prolonged only a matter of eight years; but looking back, what an
eternity was emcompassed in those eight years.

One of the leading characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon is that on coming
to the western hemisphere he brought with him his wife and children,--
his school books, and his Bible. As soon, therefore, as a spot for a
home had been selected and a rude shelter of logs erected for loved
ones, the neighbors began discussing the question of school. It was