In Beaver World

Beaver skins lured the hunter and trapper over all American wilds. These skins were one of the earliest mediums of exchange among the settlers of North America. For two hundred years they were one of the most important exports, and for a longer time they were also the chief commodity of trade on the frontier. A beaver skin was not only the standard by which other skins were measured in value, but also the standard of value by which guns, sugar, cattle, hatchets, and clothing were measured. Though freely used by the early settlers for clothing, they were especially valuable as raw material for the manufacture of hats, and for this purpose were largely exported.

From this animal were prepared many remedies which in former times were believed to have high medicinal value. Castoreum was the most popular of these, and from it was compounded the great cure-all. The skin of the beaver was thought to be an excellent preventive of colic and consumption; the fat of the beaver efficient in apoplexy and epilepsy, to stop spasms, and for various afflictions of the nerves. Powdered beaver teeth were often given in soup for the prevention of many diseases. The castoreum of the beaver was considered a most efficient remedy for earache, deafness, headache, and gout, for the restoring of the memory and the cure of insanity. Next in importance to its skin, the beaver was valued for the castoreum it yielded.

The old hunters, trappers, and first settlers forecast with confidence the weather from the actions of the beaver. This animal was credited with being weather-wise to a high degree. From his actions the nature of the oncoming winter was predicted, and plans to meet it were made accordingly. Faith in the beaver’s actions and activities as a basis for weather-forecasting was almost absolute. If the beaver began work early, the winter was to begin early. If the beaver laid up a large harvest, covered the house deeply with mud, and raised the water-level of the pond, the winter was, of course, to be a long and severe one.

Extensive autumn rambles in the mountains with especial attention to beaver customs compels me to conclude that as a basis for weather prediction beaverdom is not reliable. In the course of one autumn month in the mountains of Colorado more than one hundred colonies were observed. In many colonies work for the winter commenced early. In others, only a few miles distant, preparations for the winter did not begin until late. In some, extensive preparations were made for the winter. In a few the harvest laid up was exceedingly small. Thus in one month of the same year I saw some beaver colonies preparing for a long winter and others for a short one, many preparing for a hard winter and others almost unprepared for winter. From these varied and conflicting prognostications, how was one accurately to forecast the coming winter? The old prophets in one colony frequently disagreed with aged prophets who were similarly situated, but in a neighboring colony. At one place thirty or more beaver gathered an enormous quantity of food, sufficient, in fact, to have supplied twice that number for the longest and most severe winter. The winter which followed was as mild a one as had passed over the Rocky Mountains in fifty years. Not one tenth of the big food-pile was eaten.

I have not detected anything that indicates that the beaver ever plan for an especially hard winter. Goodly preparations are annually made for winter. Apparently the extent of the preparation in any colony is dependent almost entirely upon the number of beaver that are to winter in that colony. Winter preparations consist of gathering the food-harvest, repairing and sometimes raising the dam, and commonly covering the house with a layer of mud. Beaver display forethought, intelligence, and even wisdom, but being weather-wise is not one of their successful specialties. Local beaver now and then show unusual activity, and unusually large supplies are gathered and stored for the winter. This kind of work appears to be local, not general. The cases in which unusually large preparations were made for the winter could have been traced to an increased population of the colony that showed these activities. On the other hand, colonies with less preparations one year than on the preceding one probably had suffered a decrease of population. Increase of population in a beaver colony may be accounted for through the growing up of youngsters, or by the arrival of immigrants, or both; where the temporary inactivity of trappers in one locality might allow the beaver colony in that region to increase in numbers; or where the beaver population of that colony might be increased by the arrival of beaver driven from their homes by aggressive hunters and trappers in adjoining localities. At any rate, in the beaver world, some colonies each year commence work earlier than do others, and some colonies make extensive preparations for the winter, while others make but little preparation. This preparation appears to be determined chiefly by the number of colonists and the needs of the colony.

The beaver hastened, if it did not bring, the settlement of the country. Hunters and trappers blazed the trails, described the natural resources, and lured the permanent settlers to possess the land and build homes among the ruins left by the beaver. Early in the fur industry companies were formed, the Hudson’s Bay Company becoming the most influential and best known. Its charter was granted by Charles II of England on the 2d day of May, 1669. This company finally developed into one of the greatest commercial enterprises that America has ever known. The skin of the beaver furnished more than half its revenue. There are many features in the history of this company that have never been surpassed in any land. For more than two hundred years it held absolute sway over a country larger than Europe, and for the first one hundred and fifty years of its existence it was the government of the territory where it ruled, and thus determined the social and other standards of life within that territory. One of the early officials of this company declared that they were on the ground ahead of the missionaries, and said that the initials “H. B. C.” on the banner of the company might well be interpreted as “Here before Christ.”

Kingsford’s History of Canada says that in the eighteenth century, Canada exported a moderate quantity of timber, wheat, the herb called ginseng, and a few other commodities, but from first to last she lived chiefly on beaver skins. Horace T. Martin, formerly Secretary of Agriculture for Canada, calls the beaver’s part in Canadian development “a subject which has from the inception of civilization been associated with the industrial and commercial development, and indirectly with the social life, the romance, and to a considerable extent with the wars of Canada.”

The American Fur Company and the Northwestern Fur Company were two large fur-gathering enterprises whose trappers ranged afar and who left their mark in the history and the development of the Northwest. The colossal Astor fortune really had its beginning in the wealth which John Jacob Astor amassed chiefly through the gathering and the sale of beaver skins. Beaver skins are now economically unimportant in commerce, but their value has already led to the establishment of a few beaver farms.

To-day beaver are apparently extinct over the greater portion of the area which they formerly occupied, and are scarce over the remaining inhabited area. Scattered colonies are found in the Rocky Mountains and in the mountains of the Pacific Coast, and there are localities in Canada where they are still fairly abundant. In many places in the Grand Cañon of the Colorado they are common. A few are found in Michigan and Maine. Some years ago a few brooks in the Adirondacks were successfully colonized with these useful animals. They have reappeared in Pennsylvania, and there probably are straggling beaver all over the United States which, if protected, would increase.

There is a growing sentiment in favor of allowing the beaver to multiply. In 1877 Missouri passed a law protecting these animals; so did Maine in 1885 and Colorado in 1899. Other States to the total number of twenty-four have also legislated for their protection. The Canadian government has also passed protective laws. A noticeable increase has already occurred in a few localities. Beaver multiply rapidly under protection, as is shown in the National Parks of both Canada and the United States.

As Others See Him

For three hundred years the beaver has been a popular subject for discussion. Fabulous accounts have been given concerning his works, and that which he has done has been exaggerated beyond recognition. Many of the descriptions of him are grotesque, and many accounts of his works are uncanny. His tail has been made to do the work of a pile-driver, and some of the old accounts credit him with driving stakes into the ground that were as large as a man’s thigh and five or six feet long. Stories have been told that his tail was used as a trowel in plastering the house and the dam. A few writers have stated that he lived in a three-story lodge. More than a century ago Audubon called attention to the enormous mass of fabrications that had been written concerning this animal, and in 1771 Samuel Hearne of the Hudson’s Bay Company denounced a beaver nature-faker in the following terms: “The compiler of the Wonders of Nature and Art seems to have not only collected all the fictions into which other writers on the subject have run, but has so greatly improved on them that little remains to be added to his account of the beaver beside a vocabulary of their language, a code of their laws, and a sketch of their religion, to make it the most complete natural history of that animal.”

One might read almost the entire mass of printed matter concerning the beaver without obtaining correct information about his manners and customs or an accurate description of his works and without getting at the real character of this animal. The actual life and character of the beaver, however, the work which he does, the unusual things which he has accomplished, are really more interesting and place the beaver on a higher plane than do all the fictitious tales and exaggerated accounts written concerning him.

Mr. Lewis H. Morgan in his “American Beaver and his Works” says: “No other animal has attracted a larger share of attention or acquired by his intelligence a more respectable position in the public estimation. Around him are the dam, the lodge, the burrow, the tree-cutting, and the artificial canal, each testifying to his handiwork, and affording us an opportunity to see the application as well as the results of his mental and physical powers. There is no animal below man in the entire range of Mammalia which offers to our investigation such a series of works, or presents such remarkable material for study and illustration of animal psychology.”

Mr. Morgan was for years a capable and painstaking student of the beaver. That which he has written is so important a contribution concerning the beaver that no one interested in this animal can afford to be unacquainted with it. In the preface of his book he says: “I took up the subject as I did fishing, for summer recreation. In the year 1861, I had occasion to visit the Red River Settlement in the Hudson’s Bay Territory, and in 1862, to ascend the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains, which enabled me to compare the works of the beaver in these localities with those on Lake Superior. At the outset I had no expectation of following up the subject year after year, but was led on, by the interest which it awakened, until the materials collected seemed to be worth arranging for publication.”

The greatest admirers of the beaver are those who know him best. He bears acquaintance. This cannot be had by merely looking at the animal, nor by sympathetically studying his monumental works. These works will of course impress one, but they give one at best only a traveler’s impression. Long and repeated visits to the colony in its busy season appear to be the best way to get at the character of the beaver. The cubical contents of a dam may not even suggest the obstacles overcome in its construction, the labor of getting the material, the dangers avoided, the numerous unexpected difficulties overcome. Five cords of green poles and limbs in a neat pile in the pond by the beaver house may tell that the harvest has been gathered, but it does not tell that a part of this harvest may have been gathered a mile away and skillfully transported to the house with difficulty and amid dangers. A part of the food-pile may have been dragged laboriously uphill and along trails which required months of labor to open; or numerous pieces in this pile may have been floated through a canal of such magnitude that a generation was required to construct it. Altogether, harvest-gathering is interesting and heroic work on the part of the beaver. In doing it he takes large risks, for the harvest is usually gathered far from the house and on the dangerous beaver frontier.

For more than a quarter of a century I have been a friendly visitor to his colonies, in which I have lingered long and lovingly. That he makes mistakes is certain, but that he is an intelligent, reasoning animal I have long firmly believed. As I said in “Wild Life on the Rockies,”—“I have so often seen him change his plans so wisely and meet emergencies so promptly and well that I can think of him only as a reasoner.”

As evidence that he sometimes reasons, it may be cited that he occasionally endeavors to fell trees in a given direction; that he often avoids cutting those entangled at the top; that sometimes he will, on a windy day, fell trees on the leeward side of a grove; that he commonly avoids felling trees in the heart of a grove, but cuts on the outskirts of it. He occasionally dams a stream, digs a canal, leads water to a dry place, and there forms and fills a reservoir and establishes a home. Often his house is built by a spring and thus the danger from thick ice avoided. These are some of the reasons for my believing him to be intelligent.

Morgan speaks of the beaver as “endowed with a mental principle which performs for him the same office that the human mind does for man,” and says, “The works of the beaver afford many interesting illustrations of his intelligence and reasoning capacity,” also, “In the capacity thereby displayed of adapting their works to the ever-varying circumstances in which they find themselves placed instead of following blindly an invariable type, some evidence of possession on their part of free intelligence is undoubtedly furnished.”

Mr. George J. Romanes has the following opinion of the beaver: “Most remarkable among rodents for instinct and intelligence, unquestionably stands the beaver. Indeed there is no animal—not even excepting the ants and bees—where instinct has risen to a higher level of far-reaching adaptation to certain constant conditions of environment, or where faculties, undoubtedly instinctive, are more puzzlingly wrought up with faculties no less undoubtedly intelligent.... It is truly an astonishing fact that animals should engage in such vast architectural labors with what appears to be the deliberate purpose of securing, by such artificial means, the special benefits that arise from their high engineering skill. So astonishing, indeed, does this fact appear, that as sober minded interpreters of fact we would fain look for some explanation which would not necessitate the inference that these actions are due to any intelligent appreciation, either of the benefits that arise from labor, or of the hydrostatic principles to which this labor so clearly refers.”

Mr. Alexander Majors, originator of the Pony Express, who lived a long, alert life in the wilds, pays the beaver the following peculiar tribute in his “Seventy Years on the Frontier”: “The beaver, considered as an engineer, is a remarkable animal. He can run a tunnel as direct as the best engineer could do with his instruments to guide him. I have seen where they have built a dam across a stream, and not having sufficient head water to keep their pond full, they would cross to a stream higher up the side of the mountain, and cut a ditch from the upper stream and connect it with the pond of the lower, and do it as neatly as an engineer with his tools could possibly do it. I have often said that the beaver in the Rocky Mountains had more engineering skill than the entire corps of engineers who were connected with General Grant’s army when he besieged Vicksburg on the banks of the Mississippi. The beaver would never have attempted to turn the Mississippi into a canal to change its channel without first making a dam across the channel below the point of starting the canal. The beaver, as I have said, rivals and sometimes even excels the ingenuity of man.”

Longfellow translates the spirit of the beaver world into words, and enables one in imagination to restore the primeval scenes wherein the beaver lived:—

And the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis, fleeing from the wrath of Hiawatha, ran,—

The Beaver Dam

Millions of beaver ponds graced America’s wild gardens at the time the first settlers came. These ragged and poetic ponds varied in length from a few feet to one mile, and in area they were from one hundred acres down to a miniature pond that half a dozen merry children might encircle. These ponds were formed by dams built by beaver, and the dams varied greatly in size and were made of poles variously combined with sticks, stones, trash, rushes, and earth.

In the Bad Lands of Dakota I saw two dams that were made of chunks of coal. This material had caved from a near-by bluff. I have noticed a few that were constructed of cobble-stones. The water-front of these dams was filled and covered with clay, and they were the work of “grass beavers,”—beaver that subsist chiefly on grass, and that live in localities almost destitute of trees.

It is doubtful if a dam is ever made by felling logs or large trees across the stream. I have, however, seen a few real log dams, but in these the logs were placed parallel to the flow of water. One of these was in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho. Here a snow-slide swept several hundred trees down the mountain. This wreckage was piled on the bank of a stream. Beaver in a colony a short distance away accepted this gift of the gods, and of these unwieldy logs built a dam about two hundred feet downstream from where the avalanche had piled the logs. This dam was a massive affair, about forty feet long and eight feet high. It really appeared more like a log jam than a dam, but it served the purpose intended and raised the level of the river so that the water overflowed to one side and spread in a broad sheet against a cliff and through a grove of aspens, which the beaver proceeded to harvest.

The majority of dams are made of slender green poles which are placed lengthwise with the flow for the bottom, and set braced with the end upstream a foot or so higher than the downstream end. With these there are occasionally used small limby trees. The large end of the tree is placed upstream, and the small bushy end downstream. If in a current these sometimes are weighed down with mud or stones. Short, stout sticks and long, slender poles are deftly mingled in the dam as it rises. The poles overlie, and many completed dams appear as though made of gigantic inclined half-closed shears and compasses of poles. Thus a dam is doubly braced. The weight against it is resisted both by the end-on poles that are parallel to the flow and by those set at an angle to it.

The shape and the material of a dam are dependent on a number of things: the nature of the place where built, the kind of materials available for its building, the purpose it is intended to serve, and the relation it may have to dams already constructed. Sometimes a small dam will be made—that may ultimately become a big one—by simply digging a ditch across the stream or basin and piling the excavated material into a dam.

Beaver, like men, are unequal in their skill, both in planning and in doing work, and the work of most beaver falls short of perfection. Errors are not uncommon. More than one colony has commenced a dam apparently without knowing that there was not sufficient available material to complete it. Others have built in the wrong places, and have thus failed to flood the area which they desired to reach or cover with water. Occasionally the difficulties of construction have been too great for the beaver who attempted it, and the dam has been abandoned in an incomplete state. Now and then a weak dam breaks, or a strong one is swept out by a flood.

But why do beaver need or want the pond which the dam forms? They need it for the purpose of maintaining water of sufficient depth and area to enable them to move about in safety, and to transport their food-supplies with the greatest ease. Above all, the pond is a place of refuge into which the beaver can constantly plunge and have security from his numerous and ever watchful enemies. The house-entrance must be kept water-covered. In the water the beaver is in his element. On the land he is a child lost in the wilds. He has extremely short legs and a heavy body. His make-up fits him for movement in the water. He is a graceful swimmer, and in the water can move easily and evade enemies; while on land he is an awkward lubber, moves slowly, and is easily overtaken. Water of sufficient depth and area, then, is essential to the life and happiness of the beaver. To have this at all times it is necessary, in localities where the supply is at times insufficient, to maintain it by means of dams and ponds.

Deep ponds are needed around the house; shallow ponds with shores in near-by groves facilitate far-away logging. Dams are placed across streams whose waters are to be led away through new channels and made to serve elsewhere in canals or ponds. Dams are made across inclined canals to catch and hold water in them. Streams are beaver’s avenues of travel. Along shallow streams in a beaver country it is not uncommon to see an occasional short dam which forms a deep hole, which apparently is maintained as a harbor or place of safety into which traveling beaver may dive and be made safe from pursuit.

Most beaver dams are built on the installment plan. They are the result of growth. The new dam is short and comparatively low. It is enlarged as conditions may require. As the trees in the edge of the pond are harvested, the dam is built higher and longer, so as to flood a larger area; or as sediment fills the pond, the dam is from time to time raised and lengthened in order to maintain the desired depth of water. Thus it may grow through the years until the possibilities of the locality are exhausted. The dam may then be abandoned. It may be used for a few years or it may be used for a century. A gigantic beaver dam may thus represent the work of several generations of beaver. It often occurs that one or more generations may use a dam and yearly add something to its size. By and by these beaver may die or emigrate. The old dam remains, falling to ruin in places. Years go by and other beaver come upon the scene. The old dam is then used for the foundation for a new one. The appearance of some old dams indicates that they have been repeatedly used and abandoned.

New dams, being made largely of coarse materials, appear very unlike old ones. Decay, settling, repairs, and other changes come rapidly. The dam is built of poles to-day; it speedily becomes earthy and is planted by nature to grass, willows, and flowers. On old, large dams it is not uncommon to see old forest-trees. The roots of these entangle the constructive materials, penetrate deeply, and help to anchor securely the entire dam.

In only a few cases are the water-fronts of dams at once plastered or filled in with mud. This is done only where there is a scarcity of water. It is the aim of the beaver to raise the water in the pond to a certain height and there maintain it, the chief purpose of the dam being to regulate the height or the depth of the water. The water, in streaming through new dams, deposits therein quantities of sticks, trash, and sediment, so that in a year or two these choke the holes, almost stop the leakage of the water, and help to solidify the dam. The discharge from dams is regulated by the beaver. In some instances water leaks through a dam in numerous places from bottom to top; in others it seeps through only close to the top; and in still others the dam is so solid that the water pours over the top in a thin sheet. In some cases, however, instead of the water pouring over the entire length of the dam the beaver force it to pour over in a given stretch at one end or the other, or sometimes through a hole or tunnel. The concentration of the overflow at some one point in the dam is commonly done either for the purpose of using it in transportation or to force the water to outpour on a spot where it will least erode the foundation of the dam. Occasionally beaver compel the water to flow round the end of a dam, which they raise sufficiently high for that purpose. Sometimes they dig a waste-way for the water.

European beaver appear to have barely developed to the dam-building stage. Rarely did they build even a small, unimportant dam. Nor did all the American beaver build dams. At the time the beaver population was most numerous and widely distributed, probably not more than half of them used the dam. However, those not using the dam were living in places where the dam and consequent pond were not needed. Dam-building enormously increased the habitable beaver area. There were, and are, thousands of brooks which each year cease to flow for a period, yet on these brooks are all other beaver requirements except a permanent, sufficient water-supply. By dam-building water is stored for to-morrow, or stream-courses changed, and with the assistance of canals water is diverted to a dry ravine where a colony is established.

The dam is the largest and in many respects the most influential beaver work. Across a stream it is an inviting thoroughfare for the folk of the wild. As soon as a dam is completed, it becomes a wilderness highway. It is used day and night. Across it go bears and lions, rabbits and wolves, mice and porcupines; chipmunks use it for a bridge, birds alight upon it, trout attempt to leap it, and in the evening the graceful deer cast their reflections with the willows in its quiet pond. Across it dash pursuer and pursued. Upon it take place battles and courtships. Often it is torn by hoof and claw. Death struggles stain it with blood. Many a drama, romantic and picturesque, fierce and wild, is staged upon the beaver dam.

The beaver dam gives new character to the landscape. It frequently alters the course of a stream and changes the topography. It introduces water into the scene. It nourishes new plant-life. It brings new birds. It provides a harbor and a home for fish throughout the changing seasons. It seizes sediment and soil from the rushing waters, and it sends water through subterranean ways to form and feed springs which give bloom to terraces below. It is a distributor of the waters; and on days when dark clouds are shaken with heavy thunder, the beaver dam silently breasts, breaks, and delays the down-rushing flood waters, saves and stores them; then, through all the rainless days that follow, it slowly releases them.

Most old colonies have many dams and ponds. A dam is sometimes built for the purpose of forcing water back and to one side into a grove that is to be harvested for food. In many cases water flows round the end of a dam, and in making its way back to the main channel is intercepted by another dam, then another; and thus the water from one small brook maintains a cluster or chain of pondlets.

The majority of beaver dams are as crooked as a river’s course. Now and then one is straight. A few are built from shore to a boulder, from the boulder to a willow-clump, and finally, perhaps, from willow-clump to some outstretching peninsula on the further shore. It is not uncommon for a short dam to be built and afterwards lengthened with additions on each end which may curve either down or up stream. Sometimes a dam is built outward from opposite shores simultaneously by separate but coöperating crews of beaver. In swift water these ends are forced downstream in building, so that when they are finally joined midstream the dam curves noticeably downstream.

On one occasion I watched beaver commence and complete a dam in moderately swift water that when finished bowed strongly upstream. This, however, was not the intention of the builders. The material for this dam consisted of willow and alder poles that were cut some distance upstream. These were floated down as used. This dam was begun against a huge boulder near midstream, and built outward simultaneously toward both shores. Despite the repeated efforts of the builders to extend it in a straight line to the shore, the flow of the water pushed these outbuilding ends downward, and when they finally reached the shore this fifty-odd feet of dam with the boulder for a keystone had an arch that was about fifteen feet in advance of the bases.

Not far from where I lived in the mountains when a boy, the beaver built a dam. This had a slight arch upstream. A few years later the dam was doubled in length by building an extension on the end which bowed downstream. It thus stood a reverse curve. Later the dam was still further lengthened by a comparatively straight stretch on one end, and by a short, down-bowing stretch on the other. Recent additions to this dam consist of wings at the end which sweep upstream. The dam as it now stands reaches about three fourths of the way around the pond which it forms.

It is not uncommon for a dam to be planned and built with an arch against the current or against the water which it afterwards impounds. The most interesting dam of this kind that I ever saw was one across the narrow neck of a rudely bell-shaped basin that was about two hundred feet in length. The material for this dam came from a grove of aspens that extended into one side of the basin. The floor of this basin was partly covered with a few inches of water. In starting the dam the beaver evidently knew where they wanted to build it. This was not by the aspen grove where the materials were convenient, where the dam would need to be about one hundred and twenty feet long, but was about fifty feet farther on, where a dam of only forty feet was required. This dam when completed bowed seven feet against the enclosed water. The beaver commenced building at the end nearest the grove of aspens, pulling and dragging the poles the fifty feet to it. They laid these aspen poles, which were two to five inches in diameter and from four to twelve feet in length, at right angles to the length of the dam, and usually placed the large end upstream or against the current. But the water was shallow, and the transportation of these poles to the dam was difficult. Accordingly a ditch or canal was dug from the grove to the place by the dam where the work was going on. This ditch was about twenty-five inches wide and fifteen deep. The waters filled it and thereby afforded an easy means of floating or transporting the poles from the grove to the place where they were being used. This ditch was carried forward along the upper line of the dam, and several feet in advance of the spot where the outbuilding work was advancing. Upon the earth thrown up from this were laid the upper or high ends of the poles. When the dam was finally completed, it was approximately eight feet wide on the base and stood four feet high. As soon as it was completed, the beaver stuffed the water-front with mud and grass roots, which were obtained by digging from the construction ditch immediately in front of the dam. In other words, they enlarged their pole-floating ditch above the dam into a deeper and wider channel, and used this excavated material for strengthening and waterproofing the dam.

The longest beaver dam that I have ever seen or measured was on the Jefferson River near Three Forks, Montana. This was 2140 feet long. Most of it was old. More than half of it was less than six feet in height; two short sections of it, however, were twenty-three feet wide at the base, five on top, and fourteen feet high.

Harvest Time with Beavers

One autumn I watched a beaver colony and observed the customs of its primitive inhabitants as they gathered their harvest for winter. It was the Spruce Tree Colony, the most attractive of the sixteen beaver municipalities on the big moraine on the slope of Long’s Peak.

The first evening I concealed myself close to the beaver house by the edge of the pond. Just at sunset a large, aged beaver of striking, patriarchal appearance rose in the water by the house, and swam slowly, silently round the pond. He kept close to the shore and appeared to be scouting to see if an enemy lurked near. On completing the circuit of the pond, he climbed upon the end of a log that was thrust a few feet out into the water. Presently several other beaver appeared in the water close to the house. A few of these at once left the pond and nosed quietly about on the shore. The others swam about for some minutes and then joined their comrades on land, where all rested for a time.

Meanwhile the aged beaver had lifted a small aspen limb out of the water and was squatted on the log, leisurely eating bark. Before many minutes elapsed the other beavers became restless and finally started up the slope in a runway. They traveled slowly in single file and one by one vanished amid the tall sedge. The old beaver slipped noiselessly into the water, and a series of low waves pointed toward the house. It was dark as I stole away in silence for the night, and Mars was gently throbbing in the black water.

This was an old beaver settlement, and the numerous harvests gathered by its inhabitants had long since exhausted the near-by growths of aspen, the bark of which is the favorite food of North American beaver, though the bark of the willow, cottonwood, alder, and birch is also eaten. An examination of the aspen supply, together with the lines of transportation,—the runways, canals, and ponds,—indicated that this year’s harvest would have to be brought a long distance. The place it would come from was an aspen grove far up the slope, about a quarter of a mile distant from the main house, and perhaps a hundred and twenty feet above it. In this grove I cut three notches in the trunks of several trees to enable me to identify them whether in the garnered pile by a house or along the line of transportation to it.

The grounds of this colony occupied several acres on a terraced, moderately steep slope of a mountain moraine. Along one side rushed a swift stream on which the colonists maintained three but little used ponds. On the opposite side were the slope and summit of the moraine. There was a large pond at the bottom, and one or two small ponds, or water-filled basins, dotted each of the five terraces which rose above. The entire grounds were perforated with subterranean passageways or tunnels.

Beaver commonly fill their ponds by damming a brook or a river. But this colony obtained most of its water-supply from springs which poured forth abundantly on the uppermost terrace, where the water was led into one pond and a number of basins. Overflowing from these, it either made a merry little cascade or went to lubricate a slide on the short slopes which led to the ponds on the terrace below. The waters from all terraces were gathered into a large pond at the bottom. This pond measured six hundred feet in circumference. The crooked and almost encircling grass-grown dam was six feet high and four hundred feet long. In its upper edge stood the main house, which was eight feet high and forty feet in circumference. There was also another house on one of the terraces.

After notching the aspens I spent some time exploring the colony grounds and did not return to the marked trees until forty-eight hours had elapsed. Harvest had begun, and one of the largest notched trees had been felled and removed. Its gnawed stump was six inches in diameter and stood fifteen inches high. The limbs had been trimmed off, and a number of these lay scattered about the stump. The trunk, which must have been about eighteen feet long, had disappeared, cut into lengths of from three to six feet, probably, and started toward the harvest pile. Wondering for which house these logs were intended, I followed, hoping to trace and trail them to the house, or find them en route. From the spot where they were cut, they had evidently been rolled down a steep, grassy seventy-foot slope, at the bottom of this dragged an equal distance over a level stretch among some lodge-pole pines, and then pushed or dragged along a narrow runway that had been cut through a rank growth of willows. Once through the willows, they were pushed into the uppermost pond. They were taken across this, forced over the dam on the opposite side, and shot down a slide into the pond which contained the smaller house. Only forty-eight hours before, the little logs which I was following were in a tree, and now I expected to find them by this house. It was good work to have got them here so quickly, I thought. But no logs could be found by the house or in the pond! The folks at this place had not yet laid up anything for winter. The logs must have gone farther.

On the opposite side of this pond I found where the logs had been dragged across the broad dam and then heaved into a long, wet slide which landed them in a small, shallow harbor in the grass. From this point a canal about eighty feet long ran around the brow of the terrace and ended at the top of a long slide which reached to the big pond. This canal was new and probably had been dug especially for this harvest. For sixty feet of its length it was quite regular in form and had an average width of thirty inches and a depth of fourteen. The mud dug in making it was piled evenly along the lower side. Altogether it looked more like the work of a careful man with a shovel than of beaver without tools. Seepage and overflow from the ponds above filled and flowed slowly through it and out at the farther end, where it swept down the long slide into the big pond. Through this canal the logs had been taken one by one. At the farther end I found the butt-end log. It probably had been too heavy to heave out of the canal, but tracks in the mud indicated that there was a hard tussle before it was abandoned.

The pile of winter supplies was started. Close to the big house a few aspen leaves fluttered on twigs in the water; evidently these twigs were attached to limbs or larger pieces of aspen that were piled beneath the surface. Could it be that the aspen which I had marked on the mountainside a quarter of a mile distant so short a time before, and which I had followed over slope and slide, through canal and basin, was now piled on the bottom of this pond? I waded out into the water, prodded about with a pole, and found several smaller logs. Dragging one of these to the surface, I found there were three notches in it.

Evidently these heavy green tree cuttings had been sunk to the bottom simply by the piling of other similar cuttings upon them. With this heavy material in the still water a slight contact with the bottom would prevent the drifting of accumulated cuttings until a heavy pile could be formed. However, in deep or swift water I have noticed that an anchorage for the first few pieces was secured by placing these upon the lower slope of the house or against the dam.

Scores of aspens were felled in the grove where the notched ones were. They were trimmed, cut into sections, and limbs, logs, and all taken over the route of the one I had followed, and at last placed in a pile beside the big house. This harvest-gathering went on for a month. All about was busy, earnest preparation for winter. The squirrels from the tree-tops kept a rattling rain of cones on the leaf-strewn forest floor, the cheery chipmunk foraged and frolicked among the withered leaves and plants, while aspens with leaves of gold fell before the ivory sickles of the beaver. Splendid glimpses, grand views, I had of this strange harvest-home. How busy the beavers were! They were busy in the grove on the steep mountainside; they tugged logs across the runways; they hurried them across the water-basins, wrestled with them in canals, and merrily piled them by the rude house in the water. And I watched them through the changing hours; I saw their shadowy activity in the starry, silent night; I saw them hopefully leave home for the harvest groves in the serene twilight, and I watched them working busily in the light of the noonday sun.

Most of the aspens were cut off between thirteen and fifteen inches above the ground. A few stumps were less than five inches high, while a number were four feet high. These high cuttings were probably made from reclining trunks of lodged aspens which were afterward removed. The average diameter of the aspens cut was four and one half inches at the top of the stump. Numerous seedlings of an inch diameter were cut, and the largest tree felled for this harvest measured fourteen inches across the stump. This had been laid low only a few hours before I found it, and a bushel of white chips and cuttings encircled the lifeless stump like a wreath. In falling, the top had become entangled in an alder thicket and lodged six feet from the ground. It remained in this position for several days and was apparently abandoned; but the last time I went to see it the alders which upheld it were being cut away. Although the alders were thick upon the ground, only those which had upheld the aspen had been cut. It may be that the beaver which felled them looked and thought before they went ahead with this cutting.

Why had this and several other large aspens been left uncut in a place where all were convenient for harvest? All other neighboring aspens were cut years ago. One explanation is that the beaver realized that the tops of the aspens were entangled and interlocked in the limbs of crowding spruces and would not fall if cut off at the bottom. This and one other aspen were the only large ones that were felled, and the tops of these had been recently released by the overturning of some spruces and the breaking of several branches on others. Other scattered large aspens were left uncut, but all of these were clasped in the arms of near-by spruces.

It was the habit of these colonists to transfer a tree to the harvest pile promptly after cutting it down. But one morning I found logs on slides and in canals, and unfinished work in the grove, as though everything had been suddenly dropped in the night when work was at its height. Coyotes had howled freely during the night, but this was not uncommon. In going over the grounds I found the explanation of this untidy work in a bear track and numerous wolf tracks, freshly moulded in the muddy places.

After the bulk of the harvest was gathered, I went one day to the opposite side of the moraine and briefly observed the methods of the Island beaver colony. The ways of the two colonies were in some things very different. In the Spruce Tree Colony the custom was to move the felled aspen promptly to the harvest pile. In the Island Colony the custom was to cut down most of the harvest before transporting any of it to the pile beside the house. Of the one hundred and sixty-two trees that had been felled for this harvest, one hundred and twenty-seven were still lying where they fell. However, the work of transporting was getting under way; a few logs were in the pile beside the house, and numerous others were scattered along the canals, runways, and slides between the house and the harvest grove.