From thence the journey progressed to the falls below Oregon City.
At the portage, we walked along a narrow plank walk built up on the side of the river bank which rose in a high rounded hill. Its noble outline stood dark with giant firs against a blue spring sky; the rushing, silvery flood of the Willamette swept below us past a bank fringed with wild currants just coming into bloom.
At the end of the walk there stood a house which represented itself as a resting place for weary travelers. We spent the night there but Alas! for rest; the occupants were convivial and “drowned the shamrock” all night long; as no doubt they felt obliged to do for wasn’t it “St. Patrick’s Day in the mornin’?”
Most likely we three, the juveniles, slumbered peacefully until aroused to learn that we were about to start “sure enough” for grandfather’s farm in the Waldo Hills.
At length the log cabin home was reached and our interest deepened in everything about. So many flowers to gather as they came in lively processional, blue violets under the oaks, blue-flags all along the valley; such great, golden buttercups, larkspurs, and many a wildling we scarcely called by any name.
All the affairs of the house and garden, field and pasture seemed by us especially gotten up, for our amusement and we found endless entertainment therein.
If a cheese was made or churning done we were sure to be “hanging around” for a green curd or paring, a taste of sweet butter or a chance to lift the dasher of the old fashioned churn. The milking time was enticing, too, and we trotted down to the milking pen with our little tin cups for a drink of fresh, warm milk from the fat, lowing kine, which fed all day on rich grasses and waited at the edge of the flower decked valley for the milkers with their pails.
As summer advanced our joys increased, for there were wild strawberries and such luscious ones! no berries in after years tasted half so good.
Some artist has portrayed a group of children on a sunny slope among the hills, busy with the scarlet fruit and called it “The Strawberry of Memory;” such was the strawberry of that summer.
One brilliant June day when all the landscape was steeped in sunshine we went some distance from home to gather a large supply. It is needless to say that we, the juvenile contingent, improved the opportunity well; and when we sat at table the following day and grandfather helped us to generous pieces of strawberry “cobbler” and grandmother poured over them rich, sweet cream, our satisfaction was complete. It is likely that if we had heard of the boy who wished for a neck as long as a giraffe so that he could taste the good things all the way down, we would have echoed the sentiment.