On the right is the rounded massive cape, on the lowest ledge of which
stands Foulweather Lighthouse. The bare slopes and steep sea-face tell
of its basaltic formation, which gives perpendicular outlines to the
jutting rocks against which, some six miles off, the waves are dashing
heavily.
Between that distant cape and the Yaquina Lighthouse Point the
coast-line is invisible from the height on which we stand, but the
ceaseless roar tells of rocky headlands and pebble-strewed beach.
Below us lies the bay, a calm haven, with its narrow entrance right
before us, and away off, a mile at sea, a protecting line of reef, with
its whole course and its north and south ends distinctly marked by the
white breakers spouting up with each long swell of the Pacific waves.
Under the shelter of the lighthouse hill, on the northern side, stands
the little town of Newport, its twenty or thirty white houses and
boat-frequented beach giving the suggestion of human life and interest
to the scene.
Away across the entrance, the broad streak of blue water marking the
deep channel is veined with white, betraying the reef below--soon, we
trust, to be got rid of in part by the engineers whose scows and barges
are strewed along the south beach there in the sun.
[Illustration: Yaquina Bay, Newport, 1880.]
[Sidenote: _NEWPORT._]
On that south side a broad strip of cool, gray sand borders the harbor,
and there stand the ferry-house, and its flag-staff and boats.
Looking to the left, the fir-crowned and fern-covered hills slope down
to Ford's Point, jutting out into deep water, which flows up for miles
till the turn above the mill shuts in the view.
But we must not wait, if we mean to catch any flounders before the tide
turns, and so we hurry down to the beach and along the hard sand
bordering the bay under the broken cliffs, and are soon shaking hands
with the cheery landlord of the Sea-View Hotel, who has been watching
us from his veranda ever since we descended the hill from Diamond Point.
CHAPTER V.
Hay-harvest--Timothy-grass--Permanent pasture--Hay-making by express--
The mower and reaper--Hay-stacks as novelties--Wheat-harvest--Thrashing
--The "thrashing crowd"--"Headers" and "self-binders"--Twine-binders
and home-grown flax--Green food for cows--Indian corn, vetches--Wild-oats
in wheat--Tar-weed the new enemy--Cost of harvesting--By hired machines
--By purchased machines--Cost of wheat-growing in the Willamette Valley.
Neither the first nor the second year did hay-harvest begin with us
till after the first week in July. We did not shut the cattle off the
hay-fields till the end of February, so that there was a great growth
of grass to be made in four months and a half.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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