And so it was, the further the work progressed, the harder the task seemed, and that second night's camp in the cabin found us if possible with less comfort than the first. But we stuck to the job through thick and thin, rain or wind, till the work was finished and the township surveyed. Positively, if at that time one could have offered me the land represented by that survey in lieu of the ten dollars per mile in greenbacks (then worth seventy-five cents on the dollar) I would have taken the greenbacks instead of the land.
Now, in the near vicinity, lots with twenty-five foot front and a hundred foot depth have sold for twenty-five thousand dollars; sixteen-story buildings occupy the land not three blocks away and a city of over a hundred thousand people has grown up on the land thus surveyed, that was then a dense virgin forest of giant timber.
FOOTNOTE:
[19] Since died at the age of 97.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
I come now to a period of my life, as one might say, on the border land between pioneer days of the old Oregon country and of the later development of the younger territory and this giant State bearing the great name of the father of our country.
An account of these ventures follows in the order of their occurrence.
MY HOP VENTURE.
The public, generally, give me the credit of introducing hop culture into the Northwest.