Near here we saw an illustration of farming carelessness that I must mention. The harvest of 1879 was marked by the first recorded instance of rust attacking the spring-sown wheat. The spring was unusually late, and when the rains ceased, about the 25th of May, the summer sun broke forth at once with unclouded warmth and splendor. The lately sown grain sprang up in marvelous vigor, and the crop promised abundantly for the farmer, when, just before the wheat hardened in the ear, the rust seized it, the leaf took a yellow tinge, and the grain shriveled up. The valley portions of Linn, Lane, Marion, and Benton Counties suffered, the first-named the most severely.
In our ride across the valley we passed several fields which were standing abandoned and unreaped; the preparations for next year's crop were in active progress; in one great wheat-field we saw the farmer, with his broad-cast grain-distributor fixed in his wagon, sowing his seed among the untouched, shriveled crop! And the wonder is that the crop of this year, all through this stricken district, was unusually fine for both quality and quantity of wheat.
I do not know that a stronger fact could be adduced in proof of the still wonderful fertility of this Willamette Valley than that it should be possible this year to reap a good crop, grown on ground that was neither reaped, plowed, nor rolled--nothing done but to cast abroad the seed and harrow it lightly in.
Soon after passing Lebanon, eighteen miles from here, we reached the foot-hills of the Cascades; round, swelling, sandy buttes; sometimes covered with short pasture-grass; generally bearing a growth of oak-brush, sprinkled with firs of a moderate size.
We slept at the first toll-gate, at the other side of Sweet Home Valley. This pretty vale deserved its name. Some five or six miles long by about two in width, there was a good expanse of fertile bottom-land, plowed and cultivated; all round the hills rose, lightly timbered in part, affording pasture for the cattle. We were told that the first five settlers were bachelors, and called the Valley "Sweet Home" to induce their lady-loves to follow them so far into what was then a wilderness. That their invitation succeeded, I judge from the fact that the valley has now three hundred inhabitants; that the settlement was a permanent one, I judge from the fact that a neat schoolhouse, well filled with scholars, is now the chief ornament of the valley.