Part 9

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.

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.