The Spell of the Rockies. Enos A. Mills

had climbed from the water and again traveled the ashy earth.

      Beavers, like fish, 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 a 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 spear-head, 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, the Moraine site was resettled. During the first season the colonists put in 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.

      Most beaver dams are built on the installment plan—are the result of growth. As the pond fills with sediment, and the water becomes shallower, the dam is built higher and, where conditions require it, longer; or, as is often the case, it may be raised and lengthened for the purpose of raising or backing water to the trees that are next to be harvested. The dams are made of sticks, small trees, sods, mud, stones, coal, grass, roots—that is, combinations of these. The same may be said of the houses. For either house or dam the most convenient material is likely to be used. But this is not always the case; for the situation of the house, or what the dam may have to endure, evidently is sometimes considered, and apparently that kind of material is used that will best meet all the requirements.

      Most beaver dams are so situated that they are destined earlier or later to accumulate sediment, trash, and fallen leaves, and become earthy; then they will, of course, be planted by Nature with grass, shrubby willows, and even trees. I have seen many trees with birds' nests in them standing on a beaver dam; yet the original dam had been composed almost entirely of sticks or stones.

      Why do beavers want or need ponds? They have very heavy bodies and extremely short legs. On land they are slow and awkward and in the greatest danger from their enemies,—wolves, lions, bears, and wildcats; but they are excellent swimmers, and in water they easily elude their enemies, and through it they conveniently bring their harvests home. Water is necessary for their existence, and to have this at all times compels the construction of dams and ponds.

      In the new Moraine Colony one of the houses was torn to pieces by some animal, probably a bear. This was before Thanksgiving. About midwinter 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 spring I several times visited a number of colonies while trying to determine the number of young brought forth at a birth. Six furry little fellows sunning themselves on top of their rude home were the first discovery; this was the twelfth of May. By the close of the month I had come in sight of many youngsters, and found the average number to be five. One mother proudly exhibited eight, while another, one who all winter had been harassed by trappers and who lived in a burrow on the bank, could display but one. In the Moraine Colony the three sets of youngsters numbered two, three, and five. Great times these had as they were growing up. They played over the house, and such fun they had nosing and pushing each other off a large boulder into the water! A thousand merry ripples they sent to the shore as they raced, wrestled, and dived in the pond, both in the sunshine and in the shadows of the willows along the shore.

The beaver has a rich birthright, though born in a windowless hut of mud. Close to the primitive place of his birth the wild folk of both woods and water meet and often mingle; around it are the ever-changing, never-ending scenes and silences of the water or the shore. He grows up with the many-sided wild, playing amid the enameled flowers, the great boulders—the Ice King's marbles—and the fallen logs in the edge of the mysterious forest; learning to swim and slide; listening to the strong, harmonious stir of wind and water; living with the stars in the sky and the stars in the pond; beginning serious life when brilliant clouds of color enrich the hills; helping to harvest the trees that wear the robes of gold, while the birds go by for the southland in the reflective autumn days. If Mother Nature should ever call me to live upon another planet I could wish that I might be born a beaver, to inhabit a house in the water.