Chapter IV: Part 4

In the excitement of getting off the crag I narrowly escaped breaking my neck. Once on the ground, I ran for the coyote, shouting wildly to frighten him off; but he was so intent upon killing that a violent kick in the ribs first made him aware of my presence. In anger and excitement he leaped at me with ugly teeth as he fled. The lion had disappeared, and by this time the beavers in the front ranks were jumping into the pond, while the others were awkwardly speeding down the slope. The coyote had killed three. If beavers have a language, surely that night the refugees related to their hospitable neighbors some thrilling experiences.

The next morning I returned to the Moraine Colony over the route followed by the refugees. Leaving their fire-ruined homes, they had followed the stream that issued from their ponds. In places the channel was so clogged with fire wreckage that they had followed alongside the water rather than in it, as is their wont. At one place they had hurriedly taken refuge in the stream. Coyote tracks in the scattered ashes explained this. But after going a short distance they had climbed from the water and again traveled the ashy earth.

Beavers commonly follow water routes, but in times of emergency or in moments of audacity they will journey overland. To have followed this stream down to its first tributary, then up this to where the colony in which they found refuge was situated, would have required four miles of travel. Overland it was less than a mile. After following the stream for some distance, at just the right place they turned off, left the stream, and dared the overland dangers. How did they know the situation of the colony in the willows, or that it had escaped fire, and how could they have known the shortest, best way to it?

The morning after the arrival of the refugees, work was begun on two new houses and a dam, which was about sixty feet in length and built across a grassy open. Green cuttings of willow, aspen, and alder were used in its construction. Not a single stone or handful of mud was used. When completed it appeared like a windrow of freshly raked shrubs. It was almost straight, but sagged a trifle downstream. Though the water filtered freely through, it flooded the flat above. As the two new houses could not shelter all the refugees, it is probable that some of them were sheltered in bank tunnels, while room for others may have been found in the old houses.

That winter the colony was raided by some trappers; more than one hundred pelts were secured, and the colony was left in ruins and almost depopulated.

The Moraine Colony site was deserted for a long time. Eight years after the fire I returned to examine it. The willow growth about the ruins was almost as thrifty as when the fire came. A growth of aspen taller than one's head clung to the old shore-lines, while a close seedling growth of lodge-pole pine throve in the ashes of the old forest. One low mound, merry with blooming columbine, was the only house ruin to be seen.

The ponds were empty and every dam was broken. The stream, in rushing unobstructed through the ruins, had eroded deeply. This erosion revealed the records of ages, and showed that the old main dam had been built on the top of an older dam and a sediment-filled pond. The second dam was on top of an older one still. In the sediment of the oldest--the bottom pond--I found a spearhead, two charred logs, and the skull of a buffalo. Colonies of beaver, as well as those of men, are often found upon sites that have a tragic history. Beavers, with Omar, might say,--

"When you and I behind the veil are past,
Oh but the long long while the world shall last."

The next summer, 1893, Moraine site was resettled. During the first season the colonists spent their time repairing dams and were content to live in holes. In autumn they gathered no harvest, and no trace of them could be found after the snow; so it is likely that they had returned to winter in the colony whence they had come. But early in the next spring there were reinforced numbers of them at work establishing a permanent settlement. Three dams were repaired, and in the autumn many of the golden leaves that fell found lodgment in the fresh plaster of two new houses.

In the new Moraine Colony one of the houses was torn to pieces by some animal, probably a bear. This was before Thanksgiving. About mid-winter a prospector left his tunnel a few miles away, came to the colony and dynamited a house, and "got seven of them." Next year two houses were built on the ruins of the two just fallen. That year's harvest-home was broken by deadly attacks of enemies. In gathering the harvest the beavers showed a preference for some aspens that were growing in a moist place about one hundred feet from the water. Whether it was the size of these or their peculiar flavor that determined their election in preference to nearer ones, I could not determine. One day, while several beavers were cutting here, they were surprised by a mountain lion which leaped upon and killed one of the harvesters. The next day the lion surprised and killed another. Two or three days later a coyote killed one on the same blood-stained spot, and then overtook and killed two others as they fled for the water. I could not see these deadly attacks from the boulder-pile, but in each case the sight of flying beavers sent me rushing upon the scene, where I beheld the cause of their desperate retreat. But despite dangers they persisted until the last of these aspens was harvested. During the winter the bark was eaten from these, and the next season their clean wood was used in the walls of a new house.

One autumn I had the pleasure of seeing some immigrants pass me _en route_ for a new home in the Moraine Colony. Of course they may have been only visitors, or have come temporarily to assist in the harvesting; but I like to think of them as immigrants, and a number of things testified that immigrants they were. One evening I had been lying on a boulder by the stream below the colony, waiting for a gift from the gods. It came. Out of the water within ten feet of me scrambled the most patriarchal, as well as the largest, beaver that I have ever seen. I wanted to take off my hat to him, I wanted to ask him to tell me the story of his life, but from long habit I simply lay still and watched and thought in silence. He was making a portage round a cascade. As he scrambled up over the rocks, I noticed that he had but two fingers on his right hand. He was followed, in single file, by four others; one of these was minus a finger on the left hand. The next morning I read that five immigrants had arrived in the Moraine Colony. They had registered their footprints in the muddy margin of the lower pond. Had an agent been sent to invite these colonists, or had they come out of their own adventurous spirit? The day following their arrival I trailed them backward in the hope of learning whence they came and why they had moved. They had traveled in the water most of the time; but in places they had come out on the bank to go round a waterfall or to avoid an obstruction. Here and there I saw their tracks in the mud and traced them to a beaver settlement in which the houses and dams had been recently wrecked. A near-by rancher told me that he had been "making it hot" for all beavers in his meadow. During the next two years I occasionally saw this patriarchal beaver or his tracks thereabout.

It is the custom among old male beavers to idle away two or three months of each summer in exploring the neighboring brooks and streams, but they never fail to return in time for autumn activities. It thus becomes plain how, when an old colony needs to move, some one in it knows where to go and the route to follow.

The Moraine colonists gathered an unusually large harvest during the autumn of 1909. Seven hundred and thirty-two sapling aspens and several hundred willows were massed in the main pond by the largest house. This pile, which was mostly below the water-line, was three feet deep and one hundred and twenty-four feet in circumference. Would a new house be built this fall? This unusually large harvest plainly told that either children or immigrants had increased the population of the colony. Of course, a hard winter may also have been expected.

No; they were not to build a new house, but the old house by the harvest pile was to be enlarged. One day, just as the evening shadow of Long's Peak had covered the pond, I peeped over a log on top of the dam to watch the work. The house was only forty feet distant. Not a ripple stirred among the inverted peaks and pines in the clear, shadow-enameled pond. A lone beaver rose quietly in the scene from the water near the house. Swimming noiselessly, he made a circuit of the pond. Then for a time, and without any apparent purpose, he swam back and forth over a short, straight course; he moved leisurely, and occasionally made a shallow, quiet dive. He did not appear to be watching anything in particular or to have anything special on his mind. Yet his eyes may have been scouting for enemies and his mind may have been full of house plans. Finally he dived deeply, and the next I saw of him he was climbing up the side of the house addition with a pawful of mud.

By this time a number of beavers were swimming in the pond after the manner of the first one. Presently all began to work. The addition already stood more than two feet above the water-line. The top of this was crescent-shaped and was about seven feet long and half as wide. It was made mostly of mud, which was plentifully reinforced with willow cuttings and aspen sticks. For a time all the workers busied themselves in carrying mud and roots from the bottom of the pond and placing these on the slowly rising addition. Eleven were working at one time. By and by three swam ashore, each in a different direction and each a few seconds apart. After a minute or two they returned from the shore, each carrying or trailing a long willow. These were dragged to the top of the addition, laid down, and trampled in the mud. Meantime the mud-carriers kept steadily at their work; again willows were brought, but this time four beavers went, and, as before, each was independent of the others. I did not see how this work could go on without some one bossing the thing, but I failed to detect any beaver acting as overseer. While there was general coöperation, each acted independently most of the time and sometimes was apparently oblivious of the others. These beavers simply worked, slowly, silently, and steadily; and they were still working away methodically and with dignified deliberation when darkness hid them.

Beaver Pioneers

I often wish that an old beaver neighbor of mine would write the story of his life. Most of the time for eighteen years his mud hut was among the lilies of Lily Lake, Estes Park, Colorado. He lived through many wilderness dangers, escaped the strategy of trappers, and survived the dangerous changes that come in with the home-builder. His life was long, stirring, and adventurous. If, in the first chapter of his life-story, he could record some of the strong, thrilling experiences which his ancestors must have related to him, his book would be all the better.

"Flat-top," my beaver neighbor, was a pioneer and a colony-founder. It is probable that he was born in a beaver house on Wind River, and it is likely that he spent the first six years of his life along this crag and aspen bordered mountain stream. The first time I saw him he was leading an emigrant party out of this stream's steep-walled upper course. He and his party settled, or rather resettled, Lily Lake.

Flat-top was the name I gave him because of his straight back. In most beaver the shoulders swell plumply above the back line after the outline of the grizzly bear. Along with this peculiarity, which enabled me to be certain of his presence, was another. This was his habit of gnawing trees off close to the earth when he felled them. The finding of an occasional low-cut stump assured me of his presence during the periods I failed to see him.

The first beaver settlement in the lake appears to have been made in the early seventies, long before Flat-top was born, by a pair of beaver who were full of the pioneer spirit. These settlers apparently were the sole survivors of a large party of emigrants who tried to climb the rugged mountains to the lake, having been driven from their homes by encroaching human settlers. After a long, tedious journey, full of hardships and dangers, they climbed into the lake that was to them, for years, a real promised land.

Driven from Willow Creek, they set off upstream in search of a new home, probably without knowing of Lily Lake, which was five miles distant and two thousand feet up a steep, rocky mountain. These pilgrims had traveled only a little way upstream when they found themselves the greater portion of the time out of water. This was only a brook at its best and in most places it was such a shallow, tiny streamlet that in it they could not dive beyond the reach of enemies or even completely cool themselves. In stretches the water spread thinly over a grassy flat or a smooth granite slope; again it was lost in the gravel; or, murmuring faintly, pursued its way out of sight beneath piles of boulder,--marbles shaped by the Ice King. Much of the time they were compelled to travel upon land exposed to their enemies. Water-holes in which they could escape and rest were long distances apart.

This plodding, perilous five-mile journey which the beaver made up the mountain to the lake would be easy and care-free for an animal with the physical make-up of a bear or a wolf, but with the beaver it is not surprising that only two of the emigrants survived this supreme trial and escaped the numerous dangers of the pilgrimage.

Lily Lake is a shallow, rounded lily garden that reposes in a glacier meadow at an altitude of nine thousand feet; its golden pond-lilies often dance among reflected snowy peaks, while over it the granite crags of Lily Mountain rise several hundred feet. A few low, sedgy, grassy acres border half the shore, while along the remainder are crags, aspen groves, willow-clumps, and scattered pines. Its waters come from springs in its western margin and overflow across a low grassy bar on its curving eastern shore.

It was autumn when these beaver pioneers came to Lily Lake's primitive and poetic border. The large green leaves of the pond-lily rested upon the water, while from the long green stems had fallen the sculptured petals of gold; the willows were wearing leaves of brown and bronze, and the yellow tremulous robes of the aspens glowed in the golden sunlight.

These fur-clad pioneers made a dugout--a hole in the bank--and busily gathered winter food until stopped by frost and snow; then, almost care-free, they dozed away the windy winter days while the lake was held in waveless ice beneath the drifting snow.

The next summer a house was built in the lily pads near the shore. Here a number of children were born during the few tranquil years that followed. These times came to an end one bright midsummer day. Lord Dunraven had a ditch cut in the outlet rim of the lake with the intention of draining it that his fish ponds, several miles below in his Estes Park game-preserve, might have water. A drouth had prevailed for several months, and a new water-supply must be had or the fish ponds would go dry. The water poured forth through the ditch, and the days of the colony appeared to be numbered.

A beaver must have water for safety and for the ease of movement of himself and his supplies. He is skillful in maintaining a dam and in regulating the water-supply; these two things require much of his time. In Lily Lake the dam and the water question had been so nicely controlled by nature that with these the colonists had had nothing to do. However, they still knew how to build dams, and water-control had not become a lost art. The morning after the completion of the drainage ditch, a man was sent up to the lake to find out why the water was not coming down. A short time after the ditch-diggers had departed, the lowering water had aroused the beaver, who had promptly placed a dam in the mouth of the ditch. The man removed this dam and went down to report. The beaver speedily replaced it. Thrice did the man return and destroy their dam, but thrice did the beaver promptly restore it.

The dam-material used in obstructing the ditch consisted chiefly of the peeled sticks from which the beaver had eaten the bark in winter; along with these were mud and grass. The fourth time that the ditch guard returned, he threw away all the material in the dam and then set some steel traps in the water by the mouth of the ditch. The first two beaver who came to reblockade the ditch were caught in these traps and drowned while struggling to free themselves. Other beaver heroically continued the work that these had begun. The cutting down of saplings and the procuring of new material made their work slow, very slow, in the face of the swiftly escaping water; when the ditch was at last obstructed, a part of the material which formed this new dam consisted of the traps and the dead bodies of the two beaver who had bravely perished while trying to save the colony.

The ditch guard returned with a rifle, and came to stay. The first beaver to come within range was shot. The guard again removed the dam, made a fire about twenty feet from the ditch, and planned to spend the night on guard, rifle in hand. Toward morning he became drowsy, sat down by the fire, heard the air in the pines at his back, watched the star-sown water, and finally fell asleep. While he thus slept, with his rifle across his lap, the beaver placed another--their last--obstruction before the outrushing water.

On awakening, the sleeper tore out the dam and stood guard over the ditch. All that afternoon a number of beaver hovered about, watching for an opportunity to stop the water again. Their opportunity never came, and three who ventured too near the rifleman gave up their lives,--reddening the clear water with their life-blood in vain.

The lake was drained, and the colonists abandoned their homes. One night, a few days after the final attempt to blockade the ditch, an unwilling beaver emigrant party climbed silently out of the uncovered entrance of their house and made their way quietly, slowly, beneath the stars, across the mountain, descending thence to Wind River, where they founded a new colony.

Winter came to the old lake-bed, and the lily roots froze and died. The beaver houses rapidly crumbled, and for a few years the picturesque ruins of the beaver settlement, like many a settlement abandoned by man, stood pathetically in the midst of wilderness desolation. Slowly the water rose to its old level in the lake, as the outlet ditch gradually filled with swelling turf and drifting sticks and trash. Then the lilies came back with rafts of green and boats of gold to enliven this lakelet of repose.

One autumn morning, while returning to my cabin after a night near the stars on Lily Mountain, I paused on a crag to watch the changing morning light down Wind River Cañon. While thus engaged, Flat-top and a party of colonists came along a game trail within a few yards of me, evidently bound for the lake, which was only a short distance away. I silently followed them. This was my introduction to Flat-top.

On the shore these seven adventurers paused for a moment to behold the scene, or, possibly, to dream of empire; then they waddled out into the water and made a circuit of the lake. Probably Flat-top had been here before as an explorer. Within two hours after their arrival these colonists began building for a permanent settlement.

It was late to begin winter preparation. The clean, white aspens had shed their golden leaves and stood waiting to welcome the snows. This lateness may account for the makeshift of a hut which the colonists constructed. This was built against the bank with only one edge in the water; the entrance to it was a twelve-foot tunnel that ended in the lake-bottom where the water was two feet deep.

The beaver were collecting green aspen and willow cuttings in the water by the tunnel-entrance when the lake froze over. Fortunately for the colonists, with their scanty supply of food, the winter was a short one, and by the first of April they were able to dig the roots of water plants along the shallow shore where the ice had melted. One settler succumbed during the winter, but by summer the others had commenced work on a permanent house, which was completed before harvest time.

I had a few glimpses of the harvest-gathering and occasionally saw Flat-top. One evening, while watching the harvesters, I saw three new workers. Three emigrants--from somewhere--had joined the colonists. A total of fifteen, five of whom were youngsters, went into winter quarters,--a large, comfortable house, a goodly supply of food, and a location off the track of trappers. The cold, white days promised only peace. But an unpreventable catastrophe came before the winter was half over.

One night a high wind began to bombard the ice-bound lake with heavy blasts. The force of these intermittent gales suggested that the wind was trying to dislodge the entire ice covering of the lake; and indeed that very nearly happened.

Before the crisis came, I went to the lake, believing it to be the best place to witness the full effects of this most enthusiastic wind. Across the ice the gale boomed, roaring in the restraining forest beyond. These broken rushes set the ice vibrating and the water rolling and swelling beneath. During one of these blasts the swelling water burst the ice explosively upward in a fractured ridge entirely across the lake. In the next few minutes the entire surface broke up, and the wind began to drive the cakes upon the windward shore.

A large flatboat cake was swept against the beaver house, sheared it off on the water-line, and overturned the conelike top into the lake. The beaver took refuge in the tunnel which ran beneath the lake-bottom. This proved a death-trap, for its shore end above the water-line was clogged with ice. As the lake had swelled and surged beneath the beating of the wind, the water had gushed out and streamed back into the tunnel again and again, until ice formed in and closed the outer entrance. Against this ice four beaver were smothered or drowned. I surmised the tragedy but was helpless to prevent it. Meanwhile the others doubled back and took refuge upon the ruined stump of their home. From a clump of near-by pines I watched this wild drama.

Less than half an hour after the house was wrecked, these indomitable animals began to rebuild it. Lashed by icy waves, beaten by the wind, half-coated with ice, these home-loving people strove to rebuild their home. Mud was brought from the bottom of the pond and piled upon the shattered foundation. This mud set--froze--almost instantly on being placed. They worked desperately, and from time to time I caught sight of Flat-top. Toward evening it appeared possible that the house might be restored, but, just as darkness was falling, a roaring gust struck the lake and a great swell threw the new part into the water.

The colonists gave up the hopeless task and that night fled down the mountain. Two were killed before they had gone a quarter of a mile. Along the trail were three other red smears upon the crusted snow; each told of a death and a feast upon the wintry mountainside among the solemn pines. Flat-top with five others finally gained the Wind River Colony, from which he had led his emigrants two years before.

One day the following June, while examining the lilies in the lake, I came upon a low, freshly cut stump;--Flat-top had returned. A number of colonists were with him and all had come to stay.

All sizable aspen that were within a few yards of the water had been cut away, but at the southwest corner of the lake, about sixty feet from the shore, was an aspen thicket. Flat-top and his fellow workers cut a canal from the lake through a low, sedgy flat into this aspen thicket. The canal was straight, about fourteen inches deep and twenty-six inches wide. Its walls were smoothly cut and most of the excavated material was piled evenly on one side of the canal and about eight inches from it. It had an angular, mechanical appearance, and suggested the work not of a beaver, but of man, and that of a very careful man too.

Down this canal the colonists floated the timbers used in building their two houses. On the completion of the houses, the home-builders returned to the grove and procured winter supplies. In most cases the small aspen were floated to the pile between the houses with an adept skill, without severing the trunk or cutting off a single limb.

The colonists had a few years of ideal beaver life. One summer I came upon Flat-top and a few other beaver by the brook that drains the lake, and at a point about half a mile below its outlet. It was along this brook that Flat-top's intrepid ancestors had painfully climbed to establish the first settlement in the lake. Commonly each summer several beaver descended the mountain and spent a few weeks of vacation along Wind River. Invariably they returned before the end of August; and autumn harvest-gathering usually began shortly after their return.

Year after year the regularly equipped trappers passed the lake without stopping. The houses did not show distinctly from the trail, and the trappers did not know that there were beaver in this place. But this peaceful, populous lake was not forever to remain immune from the wiles of man, and one day it was planted with that barbaric, cruel torture-machine, the steel trap.

A cultured consumptive, who had returned temporarily to nature, was boarding at a ranch house several miles away. While out riding he discovered the colony and at once resolved to depopulate it. The beaver ignored his array of traps until he enlisted the services of an old trapper, whose skill sent most of the beaver to their death before the sepia-colored catkins appeared upon the aspens. Flat-top escaped.

The ruinous raid of the trappers was followed by a dry season, and during the drouth a rancher down the mountain came up prospecting for water. He cut a ditch in the outlet ridge of the lake, and out gushed the water. He started home in a cheerful mood, but long before he arrived, the "first engineers" had blocked his ditch. During the next few days and nights the rancher made many trips from his house to the lake, and when he was not in the ditch, swearing, and opening it, the beaver were in it shutting off the water.

From time to time I dropped around to see the struggle, one day coming upon the scene while the beaver were completing a blockade. For a time the beaver hesitated; then they partly resumed operations and carried material to the spot, but without showing themselves entirely above water. When it appeared that they must have enough to complete the blockade, I advanced a trifle nearer so as to have a good view while they placed the accumulated material. For a time not a beaver showed himself. By and by an aged one climbed out of the water, pretending not to notice me, and deliberately piled things right and left until he had completed the ditch-damming to his satisfaction. This act was audacious and truly heroic. The hero was Flat-top.

In this contest with the rancher, the beaver persisted and worked so effectively that they at last won and saved their homes, in the face of what appeared to be an unconquerable opposition.

A little while after this incident, a home-seeker came along, and, liking the place, built a cabin in a clump of pines close to the southern shore. Though he was a gray old man without a family, I imagined he would exterminate the beaver and looked upon him with a lack of neighborly feeling.

Several months went by, and I had failed to call upon him, but one day while passing I heard him order a trapper off the place. This order was accompanied by so strong a declaration of principles--together with a humane plea for the life of every wild animal--that I made haste to call that evening.

One afternoon in a pine thicket, close to the lake-shore, I came upon two gray wolves, both devouring beaver, which had met their death while harvesting aspens for winter. The following spring I had a more delightful glimpse of life in the wilds. Within fifty feet of the lake-shore stood a large pine stump that rose about ten feet from the ground. Feeling that I should escape notice if I sat still on the top, I climbed up. Though it was mid-forenoon, the beaver came out of the lake and wandered about nibbling here and there at the few green plants of early spring. They did not detect me. They actually appeared to enjoy themselves. This is the only time that I ever saw a beaver fully at ease and apparently happy on land. In the midst of their pleasures, a flock of mountain sheep came along and mingled with them. The beaver paused and stared; now and then a sheep would momentarily stare at a beaver, or sniff the air as though he did not quite like beaver odor. In less than a minute the flock moved on, but just as they started, a beaver passed in front of the lead ram, who made a playful pretense of a butt at him; to this the beaver paid not the slightest heed.

During the homesteader's second summer he concluded to raise the outlet ridge, deepen the water, and make a fish pond of the lake. Being poor, he worked alone with wheelbarrow and shovel. The beaver evidently watched the progress of the work, and each morning their fresh footprints showed in the newly piled earth. Shortly before the dam was completed, the homesteader was called away for a few days, and on his return he was astonished to find that the beaver had completed his dam! The part made by the beaver suited him as to height and length, so he covered it over with earth and allowed it to remain. His work in turn was inspected and apparently approved by the beaver.

How long does a beaver live? Trappers say from fifteen to fifty years. I had glimpses of Flat-top through eighteen years, and he must have been not less than four years of age when I first met him. This would make his age twenty-two years; but he may have been six years of age--he looked it--the morning he first led emigrants into Lily Lake; and he may have lived a few years after I saw him last. But only the chosen few among the beaver can succeed in living as long as Flat-top. The last time I saw him was the day he dared me and blockaded the drain ditch and stopped the outrushing water.

Flat-top has vanished, and the kind old homesteader has gone to his last long sleep; but the lake still remains, and still there stands a beaver house among the pond-lilies.

The Colony in Winter

In the Medicine Bow Mountains one December day, I came upon a beaver house that was surrounded by a pack of wolves. These beasts were trying to break into the house. Apparently an early autumn snow had blanketed the house and thus prevented its walls from freezing. The soft condition of the walls, along with the extreme hunger of the wolves, led to this assault. Two of these animals were near the top of the house clawing away at a rapid rate. Now and then one of the sticks or poles in the house-wall was encountered, and at this the wolf would bite and tear furiously. Occasionally one of the wolves caught a resisting stick in his teeth, and, leaning back, shook his head, endeavoring with all his might to tear it out. A number of wolves lay about expectant; a few sat up eagerly on haunches, while others moved about snarling, driving the others off a few yards, to be in turn driven off themselves. Shortly before they discovered me, there was a fierce fight on top of the house, in which several mixed.

Even though they had broken into the house, it would have availed them nothing, for in this, as in all old colonies, there were safety tunnels from the house which extended beneath the pond to points on shore. In these tunnels the beaver find safety, if by any means the house is ruined. Although carnivorous animals are fond of beaver flesh, they rarely take the useless trouble of digging into a house. Occasionally a wolverine or a bear may dig into a thin-walled house or one not frozen, then, after breaking in, lie in wait, and endeavor to make a capture while the beaver are repairing the hole. Beaver are more secure from enemies during the winter than at any other time. It is while felling a tree far from the water or while following a shallow stream that most beaver are captured by their enemies.

Many a time in winter I have made a pleasant visit to a beaver colony. One day, a few hours after a heavy snowfall, I came out of a dark forest and stood for a time on the edge of the snow-covered pond. Around were the firs and spruces of the forest, moveless as statues and each a pointed cone of snow. Around the small snowy plain of the pond, the drooping snow-entangled willows held their heads together in contented and thoughtful silence. Everything was serene.

A clean fox track led from the woods in a straight line across the snowy surface of the pond to the house, which stood near the centre of this smooth white opening. The tracks encircled the house and ascended to the top of it, where the record imprinted in the snow told that here he watchfully rested. Descending, he had sniffed at the bushy tips of the winter food-pile that thrust up through the ice, then crossed the dam to plunge into the snowy tangle of willows.

Water was still pouring and gurgling down a steep beaver slide. This was ice-and-snow-covered except at two points where the swift splashing water dashed intermittently from a deep icy vent. While I was examining the beauty of the upbuilding icy buttresses by one of the vents, a water-ouzel came forth and alighted almost within reach. I stood still. After giving a few of his nodding bows, he reëntered the vent. Presently he emerged from the lower vent and, alighting upon an ice-coated boulder, indifferent to the gray sky from which scattered flakes were slowly falling and despite a temperature of five below zero, he sang low and sweetly for several seconds.

Beaver do not surrender themselves to the confines of a house and pond until cold solidly covers the pond with a roof of ice. The time of this is commonly about the first of December, but the date is of course, in a measure, dependent upon latitude, altitude, and the peculiar weather conditions of each year. Most beaver return to the old colony, or start a new one by the first of September. They have had a merry rambling summer and energetically take hold to have the house and dam ready and a harvest stored by the time winter begins.

But they are not always ready. Enemies may harass them, low water delay them, or an unusually early winter or even a heavy snow may so hamper them that, despite greatest effort, the ice puts a time lock upon the pond and closes them in for the winter without sufficient supplies.

Early one October an early snowfall worked hardship in several colonies near my home. Fortunately the ponds were not deeply frozen, and those colonies which had aspen groves close to the water succeeded in felling and dragging in sufficient food-supplies for the winter. As snow drifted into the groves, many of the trees harvested were cut from the tops of snowdrifts, and thus left high stumps. The following summer a number of these stood four feet above the earth and presented a striking appearance alongside the sixteen-inch stumps of normal height.

One of these storm-caught colonies fared badly. The inhabitants were obliged to go a long distance from the water for trees, and their all too scanty harvest was gathered with some loss of life. Apparently both wolves and lions discovered the unfortunate predicament of the harvesters, and lay in wait to catch them as they floundered slowly through the snow. The following winter these colonists tunneled through the bottom--perhaps the least frozen part of the dam--and came forth for food long before the break-up of the ice. The water drained from the pond, and after the ice had melted, the bottom of the pond revealed a torn-up condition as though the starving winter inmates had dug out for food every root and rootstock to be found in the bottom.

While visiting ponds at the beginning of winter, I have many times noticed that, shortly after the pond was solidly frozen over, a hole was made through the dam just below the water-surface of the pond. This lowered the water-level two inches or more. Did this slight lowering of the water have to do with the ventilation of the ice-covered pond, or was it to put a check on deep freezing, or for both purposes?

In the majority of cases these holes were made from ponds which, during the winter, received but a meagre inflow of fresh water. Naturally, ponds receiving a strong inflow of water would be better ventilated, and would freeze less swiftly and deeply than those whose waters became stagnant. This drawing-off of water after a few inches of ice had formed, would, in some places, despite the settling of the ice, form an air blanket that would delay freezing, and thus possibly prevent the ice from forming so thickly. The air admitted by drawing off the water would be inclosed beneath the ice, and might thus be helpful to the beaver inclosed in house and pond. In only a few cases were these holes made from ponds which had subway tunnels,--tunnels which run from alongside the house through the bottom of the pond to a point above water-level on the shore. In a few instances the beaver, I do not know how many, came out of this hole, cut and ate a few twigs, and then returned and closed it. Twice this was used as a way out by beaver who emerged and went to other colonies. In one case the beaver entered the other pond by making a hole through the dam. In the other they entered the pond through a subway tunnel. While these holes which lower the pond-level may have chiefly to do with ventilation, or may be for the purpose of putting a check on freezing, my evidence is not ample enough for final conclusions.

A sentence of close confinement for about a third of the year for an animal that breathes air and uses pure water, is simply one of the strange ways that work out with nature. While winter lasts, a beaver must spend his time either in the dark, ill-ventilated house or in the water of the pond. Apparently he does much sleeping and possibly has a dull time of it. No news, no visitors, and apparently nothing to do! Still a beaver has food, and when dangers surround the wild folk outside the pond's roof of glass, he would be considered a good risk for life insurance.

Although the pond is commonly covered with snow, or the ice curtained with air bubbles, there have been numerous times during which I have had clear views into the water, and could see and enjoy all that was going on within, as completely as though looking at fish or turtles through the glass walls of an aquarium. Often I have peered through the ice which covered the most used place of a winter beaver pond,--the area between the house-entrance and the food-pile. The thinness of the ice over this place was maintained by spring-water which came up through the bottom, and the beaver had so arranged their affairs that they made the best use of this shallow-freezing water. Of course most ponds are without springs.

Many a time I have seen a beaver come out of the doorway of his house and go swimming toward the food-pile with his hands against his breast. At the pile, if there was nothing small or short enough, he set to work and gnawed it off. The piece secured was taken into the doorway either in his hands or in his teeth. Afterward a beaver--the same one, I suppose--came out of the doorway, and cast the clean bone of the stick, from which the bark had been eaten, into the bottom of the pond.

When there is nothing else to do, the beaver apparently comes into the pond a few times each day for a swim. In the midst of swimming he rises at times to the under surface of the ice and, with his nose against it, exhales a quantity of air. After remaining with nose at this point a few seconds, the action of the air bubbles indicates that he is inhaling the purified air.

The rootstocks of the water-lily are sometimes dug from the bottom of the pond. At other times the beaver eats the stalks of plants that grow in the water, or digs out willow or other roots around the edge of the pond. Numbers of trout frequently lie in the water close to the doorway of a beaver house or around the food-pile. Possibly the beaver dispense tidbits of food that are liked by the trout. Occasionally grubs fall from the holes in wood from which beaver have eaten the bark. While beaver are digging in the bottom of the pond they doubtless unearth food-scraps that are welcome to trout, for these often hover in numbers on the outskirts of the muddy water which beaver roil while digging.

Although it appears that beaver have dull winters with but little to do but eat, sleep, and swim, it is probable that some of their time is spent at work. A part of their tunneling and pond-bottom canal-digging is done in winter. I have known of their extending canals in the bottom of the pond and making submarine tunnels while the pond was ice-covered.

There are times when the dam has sprung a leak and must be repaired on the inside beneath the ice. Early thaws and spring freshets sometimes wreck a dam beyond repair, or do extensive damage to the house or dam at the time when beaver enemies are likely to be at their leanest. The house and dam are sometimes ruined when the streams are so low and icy that it is not safe for beaver to go about. I know of two colonies that were crushed out of existence by snow-slides.

The dam is on rare occasions broken by late spring ice-jams. Sometimes the ice-cakes pile up on the dam and raise the water in the pond to such a height that it rises in the house and drives the beaver forth. A few beaver houses that are situated in places where the ice or spring floods may raise the water much above normal level are shaped to meet this trouble. The house is built higher and the room internally is twice the usual height. Thus there is space for the beaver to build a "platform bed" on the floor and thus raise themselves a foot or more above the common level. Despite all pains, floods sometimes drive beaver to the housetops.

By laying up supplies, and by the help of artificial pond, canal, and house, the beaver is able to spend his winter without hunger and with comfort and far greater safety than his neighbors. The winds may blow and blinding snow or flying limbs may endanger those outside; snow may bury the forage of bird and deer, and make the movement of beasts of prey slow and difficult; the cold may freeze and freeze and strew the wilds with lean and frozen forms; but the beaver beneath ice and snow shelter serenely spends the days with comfort and safety.

The winter, with its days long or short, never comes to an end, however, quite early enough to suit the beaver. They emerge from the pond at the earliest moment that frozen conditions will allow. If their subway is choked with ice, and food becomes exhausted, they will sometimes bore holes through the base of the dam.

Apparently, too, holes of this kind are bored through, or a section cut through the dam to the bottom, for the purpose of completely draining the pond. As this appears to be most often done with ponds that are full of stagnant water, or water almost stagnant, this draining may be a part of the beaver's sanitary work,--done for the purpose of getting filth and stale water out and also that the sour bottom may be sterilized by sun and wind.

Conditions determine the length of time before the dam is repaired and the pond refilled. In some cases this is done after the lapse of a few weeks and in others not until autumn. Ponds that have large pure streams running through them do not need this emptying, but occasionally they accidentally have it. Most beaver colonies are deserted in summer, and fall thus into temporary decline.

By late summer or early autumn the beaver have assembled at the place where the winter is to be spent. There are patriarchs, youngsters, and those in the prime of life. Around the old home are many who set forth from it when the violets were blooming, when the grass was at its greenest, and when mated birds were building. During the summer a few perished, while others cast their lot with other established colonies. A few of the younger make a start for themselves in new scenes,--found a new colony. Again the dam is repaired and the house recovered; again the harvest home, and again a primitive home-building family are housed in a hut that willing hands have fashioned. Again the pond freezes, and again the snow falls upon a home that stands in a valley where countless generations of beaver have lived through ice-bound winters and the ever-changing happy seasons.

The Original Conservationist

To "work like a beaver" is an almost universal expression for energetic and intelligent persistence, but who realizes the magnitude of the beaver's works? What he has accomplished is not only monumental but useful to man. He was the original Conservationist. An interesting and valuable book could be written concerning the earth as influenced and benefited by the labors of the beaver. The beaver is intimately associated with the natural resources, soil, and water. His work is not yet done, and along the sources of innumerable streams he will ever be needed to save soil, to regulate stream-flow, and to provide pools for the fish.

The beaver's conservation work is accomplished by means of the dams he constructs across streams of flowing water and the ponds that are thus formed. These dams and ponds render a number of services: first, they save soil; second, they check erosion; third, they reduce flood damage; fourth, they store water and help to sustain stream-flow; fifth, they provide water-holes for fish; and sixth, they are helpful in maintaining deep waterways by reducing the extremes of both high and low water, and also by reducing the quantity of sediment carried down into river-channels.

I had enjoyed the ways of "our first engineers" before it dawned upon me that their works might be useful to man, and that the beaver through his constructive handling of the natural resources might justly be called a conservationist. One dry winter the stream through the Moraine Colony ran low and froze to the bottom, and the only trout in it that survived were those in the deep holes of beaver ponds. These ponds offer many advantages to fish multiplication. Much food acceptable to the fish is swept into these ponds. Altogether a beaver pond is an excellent local habitation for fish.

One gray day while I was examining a beaver colony there came another demonstration of the usefulness of beaver ponds. The easy rain of two days ended in a heavy downpour--a deluge upon the mountainside a mile or so upstream. There was almost nothing on this mountain either to absorb or delay the excess of water which was speedily shed into the stream below. Flooding down the stream's channel above the beaver pond, came a roaring avalanche of water, or water-slide, with a rubbish-filled front that was five or six feet high. This expanded as it rolled into the pond, and swept far out on the sides, while the water-front, greatly lowered, rushed over the dam. A half a dozen ponds immediately below sufficed so to check the speed of this water and so greatly to reduce its volume that as it poured over the last dam of this colony it was no longer a flood.

The regulation of stream-flow is important. There are only a few rainy days each year, and all the water that flows to the sea through river-channels falls during these few rainy days. The instant the water reaches the earth it is hurried away by gravity, and unless there are factors to delay this run-off, the rivers would naturally contain water only on the rainy days and for a little while thereafter. A beaver dam and pond together form a factor of importance in the keeping of streams ever flowing. The pond is a reservoir which catches and retains some of the water coming into it during rainy days and which delays the water-flow through it. A beaver pond is a leaky reservoir, a kind of spring as it were, and if stored full during rainy days the leakage from it will help maintain stream-flow below during the dry weather. Beaver works thus tend to distribute to streams a moderate quantity of water each day. In other words they spread out or distribute the water of the few rainy days through all the days of the year.

A river which flows steadily throughout the year is of inestimable value to mankind. If floods sweep a river, they do damage. If low water comes, the wheels of steamers and of factories cease to move, and a dry river-channel means both damage and death. Numerous beaver colonies along the sources of countless streams that rise in the hills and the mountains would be helpful in equalizing the flow of these streams. I hope and believe that before many years every rushing care-free brook that springs from a great watershed will be steadied in a poetic pond that is made, and that will be maintained by our patient, persevering friend the beaver.

In the West beaver are peculiarly useful at stream-sources, where their ponds store flood waters that may later be used for stock water or for irrigation purposes. There are a number of localities in New Mexico, South Dakota, and elsewhere in the West where beaver receive the utmost protection and encouragement from ranchers, whose herds are benefited by water conveniently stored in beaver ponds. A few power companies in the country have commenced to stock with beaver the watersheds which supply them with water. They do this because they realize that countless small ponds or reservoirs are certain to be constructed by these little conservationists.