Chapter V: Part 5

Running water dissolves and erodes away the earthy materials with which it comes in contact. The presence of a beaver pond and dam across a stream's highway prevents the wearing and the carrying away of material. They not only prevent erosion or wearing away, but they take soil and sediment from the water which comes to them and thus cause an upbuilding. Hence the presence of beaver ponds along streams causes an accumulation of sediment and soil. In time these fill rocky channels and cañons, widen and lengthen valleys, and thus extend the productive area of the earth.

Beaver ponds are settling-basins, and in them are deposited the heavier matter brought in by the stream. In time the pond is filled, and if the beaver do not raise the height of the dam, the accumulated earthy matter becomes covered with flowers or forests.

On the headwaters of the Arkansas River in Colorado some placer miners found gold in the sediment of an inhabited beaver pond. In washing out the deposit of the pond they broke into an enormous amount of loose material beneath, that apparently had been piled in there by glacial action. This material, when removed, was found to have been resting in an ancient beaver pond that was about thirty feet below the one at the surface.

A few centuries ago there were millions of beaver ponds in North America; most of these were long since filled with sediment. Since then, too, countless others have been formed and filled. This soil-saving and soil-spreading still goes ever on wherever there is a beaver pond.

Many of the richest tillable lands of New England were formed by the artificial works of the beaver. There are hundreds of valleys in Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, and other States whose rich surface was spread upon them by the activities of beaver through generations. In the Southern States and in the mountains of the West, the numbers of beaver meadows are beyond computation. The aggregate area of rich soil-deposits in the United States for which we are indebted to the beaver is beyond belief, and probably amounts to millions of acres.

The beaver have thus prepared the way for forests and meadows, orchards and grain-fields, homes and school-houses. In the golden age of the beaver, their countless colonies clustered all over our land. These primeval folk then gathered their harvest. Innumerable beaver ponds, which then shone everywhere in the sun, slowly filled with deposited, outspreading soil,--and vanished. Elm avenues now arch where the low-growing willow drooped across the canal, and a populous village stands upon the seat of a primitive and forgotten colony.

A live beaver is more valuable to mankind than a dead one. As trappers in all sections of the country occasionally catch a beaver, it is probable that there still are straggling ones scattered along streams all the way from salt water up to timber-line, twelve thousand feet above sea-level. These remaining beaver may be exterminated; but if protected they would multiply and colonize stream-sources. Here they would practise conservation. Their presence would reduce river and harbor appropriations and make rivers more manageable, useful, and attractive. It would pay us to keep beaver colonies in the heights. Beaver would help keep America beautiful. A beaver colony in the wilds gives a touch of romance and a rare charm to the outdoors. The works of the beaver have ever intensely interested the human mind. Beaver works may do for children what schools, sermons, companions, and even home sometimes fail to do,--develop the power to think. No boy or girl can become intimately acquainted with the ways and works of these primitive folk without having the eyes of observation opened, and acquiring a permanent interest in the wide world in which we live. A race which can produce mothers and fathers as noble as those beaver in the Grand Cañon who offered their lives hoping thereby to save their children is needed on this earth. The beaver is the Abou-ben-Adhem of the wild. May his tribe increase!

THE END

Bibliographical Note

Beaver literature is scarce. The book which easily excels is "The American Beaver and his Works," by Lewis H. Morgan. Samuel Hearne has an excellent paper concerning the beaver in "Journey from Prince of Wales Fort to the Northern Ocean," published in 1795. Good accounts of the beaver are given in the following books: "Beavers: their Ways," by Joseph Henry Taylor; "Castorologia," by Horace T. Martin; "Shaggycoat," by Clarence Hawkes; "The House in the Water," by Charles G. D. Roberts; and "Forest Neighbors," by William Davenport Hulbert. There are also admirable papers by Ernest Thompson Seton in his "Life-Histories of Northern Animals," by W. T. Hornaday in his "American Natural History," and by Baillie-Grohman in "Camps in the Rockies."

Index

Accidents, 144.

Age, 14, 193.

Air, blanket over pond, 202, 203.

American Fur Company, 49.

Arkansas River, 218.

Astor, John Jacob, 49.

Attitudes, 6.

Audubon, John James, 53.

Autumn activities, beginning of, 200.

Bad Lands, 65.

Basins, food, 108. _See also_ Wells.

Beaver, a tame, 22-25.

Beaver, aged, of the Spruce Tree Colony, 83, 84, 95, 96;
of Lily Lake, 102-105; migrating to the Moraine Colony, 167, 168.

Bedding, 122, 123.

Bierstadt Moraine, 140.

Bobcat, 35.

Burrows, 110, 111; a substitute for houses, 127, 128.

Canada, emblem of, 43.

Canals, 77, 78, 88, 141, 145-149, 187; at Lily Lake, 103, 104;
importance, 105; use of excavated material, 105, 106; forms of,
106, 107; system at Three Forks, Mont., 107-111; dug in winter,
206

Castoreum, 43, 44.

Chasm Lake, 142.

Civilization, the beaver's influence on, 47-49.

Color, 8.

Colorado River, 25, 50.

Coöperation, 171.

Coyotes, 23, 102, 161-163, 166.

Cry, 27.

Cutting trees, methods of, 10-12, 31, 32; intelligence shown in, 57,
91; operations observed, 86, 90-96; accidents in, 144.

Dams, materials, 65-67; construction, 66, 67; uses, 69; growth, 69,
70; new and old, 70, 71; discharge from, 71, 72; not all beaver
build, 72; thoroughfares, 73; effect on topography, 73, 74; shape,
75-77; an interesting dam, 76-78; waterproofing, 78; dimensions of
a long dam, 78, 79; dimensions of other dams, 86; across
canals, 108-110; the dead-wood dam, 143-150; across a drainage
ditch, 180, 181; across an irrigation ditch, 189, 190; a
homesteader's dam completed by beaver, 192, 193; effect on
stream-flow, 213-217.

Day, working by, 33, 94, 156.

Death, 14.

Ditch, struggle over a, 179-182.

Ditches. _See_ Canals.

Diver, the young beaver, 22-25.

Domestication, 25.

Dunraven, Lord, 179.

Ears, 7.

Enemies, 14; times of danger from, 198.

Engineering, 139-150.

Erosion, checked by beaver, 214, 217, 218.

Errors, 67, 68.

Estes Park, 179.

Europe, the beaver in, 40, 41.

Exploration, 168, 169.

Eyesight, 8.

Fabulous accounts, 53.

Feet, uses of, 5, 6; form of, 8.

Feigning injury, 25, 26.

Felling trees. _See_ Cutting trees.

Fence posts, 30.

Fighting, 19, 20, 34, 35.

Fire, 158-163.

Fish, water-holes for, 214.

Flat-top, a beaver pioneer, 175, 176, 183-193.

Floods, 206, 207; damage prevented by beaver, 214, 216.

Food, 10, 84, 205.

Food-piles, 12, 13, 88, 89, 97, 150, 169.

Fossil beaver, 40.

Fox, 199.

Fruit trees, 30.

Geographical distribution, 40-42, 49, 50.

Gold, 218.

Grand Cañon, 25, 50.

Hands, uses of, 5; form of, 8.

Harvest, a year's, 97; a large, 169.

Harvest-gathering, 83-98, 148-150, 157, 158.

Hearing, 8.

Hearne, Samuel, quoted, 53.

History, the beaver in, 41-44.

Homesteader, a friendly, 190-193.

Houses, building, 3; occupants, 21; dimensions, 86, 119, 120, 130,
131; mud plastering, 97, 123-125; construction, 119-123, 130,
131; entrances, 119, 120; situation, 120, 125-127; burrows a
substitute for, 127, 128; a typical house, 130, 131; ventilation,
132; enlargement, 169-171; security, 197, 198; shaped to meet
floods, 207.

Hudson's Bay Company, the, 48.

Ice, a trouble of beaver existence, 126, 127; a catastrophe caused
by, 184-186; on the pond, 200, 202-206; casualties caused by, 207.

Indians, their legends about the beaver, 39.

Individuality, 35, 67.

Industry, 36.

Intelligence, 46, 57-60.

Irrigation-ditches, 31.

Island Colony, harvesting methods of, 92, 93.

Jefferson River, 11, 78, 107, 108.

Kingsford, William, his History of Canada, 48.

Land, beaver seen on, 191, 192.

Leadership, 20.

Legends, 39.

Lewis and Clark, 42.

Life, the beaver's, 14-16.

Lily Lake, beaver at, 101-105; beaver house at, 119; the pioneer
beaver of, 175-193; description of, 178.

Lily Mountain, 182.

Lion, mountain, 160-162, 166.

Local attachment, 141, 142.

Long, Stephen Harriman, his Journal, 33.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, his _Hiawatha_ quoted, 60, 61.

Long's Peak, 140, 153.

Love ditty, 27.

Majors, Alexander, his _Seventy Years on the Frontier_, 59, 60.

Martin, Horace T., 49.

Mating, 27.

Medicine Bow Mountains, 197.

Migration, 20, 21, 132, 133, 141, 161-163, 167-169, 175-177, 182,
183.

Mischief, 30, 31.

Moraine Colony, engineering of, 139, 142-150; discovery and
observation of, 153-158; homes destroyed by fire, 158, 159;
migrating, 161-163; new site, 163, 164; old site resettled, 165;
later fortunes, 166-171.

Morgan, Lewis H., his _American Beaver and his Works_, 54, 55, 58.

Night, working at, 33.

Northwestern Fur Company, 49.

Old, the, 34.

Outcasts, 34.

Ouzel, water, 199.

Parasites, 14.

Physical make-up, 5-9, 68.

Pipestone Creek, 11.

Place-names taken from the beaver, 42, 43.

Play, 29, 156, 157.

Ponds, early abundance, 42; size, 65, 86; uses, 68, 69; chains or
clusters of, 74; depth, 107; canals in bottom, 107; spring-filled,
113, 114; lowering the level under ice, 202, 203; draining, 208,
209; effect on stream-flow, 213-217; leaky reservoirs, 216.

Population, changes in, 46, 47.

Protection, 50, 217, 220, 221.

Reason, evidences of, 57, 58.

Romanes, George J., on the beaver, 58, 59.

Sanitation, 208.

Sawtooth Mountains, 66.

Sediment, a problem of beaver life, 125, 126.

Sheep, mountain, 192.

Size, 7.

Skins, 43, 44, 48, 49.

Sleep, 122.

Slides, 87, 112, 199.

Smell, sense of, 7.

Snake River, 25.

Soil, the beaver's conservation of, 214, 217-220.

Sounds and silence, 19, 20, 23, 26, 27, 133, 134.

Springs, use of, 204.

Spruce Tree Colony, harvest time with, 83-98; tunnels in, 113-115.

Stream-flow, effect of beaver on, 72-74, 213-217.

Strength, 9.

Subways. _See_ Tunnels.

Swimming, method of, 6.

Tail, uses of, 5, 6, 11; form and covering, 8; signalling with, 24,
31, 96; fabulous accounts of the uses of, 53.

Teeth, 7-9.

Three Forks, Montana, 42, 79; canal system at, 107-111.

Trails, 111, 112.

Transportation of dam and food material, 86-90, 92, 93; canals used
in, 106-115; trails and slides used in, 111, 112, 115; tunnels
used in, 112-115.

Trappers, 164, 189-191.

Traps, 35, 189.

Trees, cutting. _See_ Cutting trees.

Trimming trees, 12, 96.

Trout, 205, 206.

Tunnels, 85, 112-115, 198, 203, 206.

Water. _See_ Stream-flow.

Water-ouzel, 199.

Water-supply, 85, 86.

Weather-wisdom, 44-47.

Weight, 7.

Wells, food, 103, 104. _See also_ Basins.

Whistle, 26, 37.

Wildcat, 35.

Willow Creek, 176.

Wind River, 102, 175, 182, 188.

Winter, beaver life in, 197-209.

Wolves, gray, 191, 197.

Wood, dead, 143, 144.

Work, accomplished by beaver, 3-5.

Young, birth and care of, 27, 28; growth and play of, 28.

The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A