  Eight years have now passed since Shaggycoat brought his mate into the beautiful wilderness valley, and they had proceeded to make it habitable, according to the ideas of a beaver. Wonderful changes have taken place in the alder meadow since then, and one would not know it to be the same spot. It is no more an alder meadow, but a beautiful forest lake stretching away into the distance until it is lost between the foothills, nearly two miles above the dam. On either side, the sparkling waters flow back to the amphitheatre of hills that enfold it and the lake is altogether like a wonderful sparkling jewel set in the emerald surrounding of the foothills. Each summer, during his wanderings, Shaggycoat has met other wanderers like himself, and many of them have returned with him to his mountain lake. Even the first autumn, when he returned with his amputated paw, a pair of sleek beavers came with him, so there were two beaver lodges in the pond during the second winter instead of one. The dam was also strengthened and broadened during that second autumn until the pond was twice its original size. The third spring Shaggycoat's own first family of beavers left the lodge to roam during the summer months, and to return in the autumn with mates. This is the arrangement in a well ordered beaver lodge. The children stay with their parents until they are three years of age, so a lodge usually contains the babies, the yearlings and two-year-olds, who allow themselves shelter under the family lodge until their third birthday, when they are shoved out to make room for the babies who have just come. So there is a general nose breaking at this time, and the elders are sent into the world while all the rest are promoted. But I do not imagine that they have to be shoved very hard, for their love of freedom and wild life, and also the mating instinct, is calling to them that third year, and they always obey the call of nature. It must not be imagined that the little dam originally built on the spot, flows all this broad expanse of country, for, as we have already seen, year by year it has been added to, until now the gorge is blocked by a log and stone structure that would do credit to man, with all his building and engineering skill. It seems to me that the beaver, with his building instinct, and his ingenuity in making his world over to suit his manner of life, more nearly resembles man than any other wild creature. Each beaver colony is a veritable city, and each lodge contains a large and well ordered family. The house is always scrupulously clean, and each member of the family has his own bed which he occupies. The front gate is surrounded by a moat, like the castles of old, and the drawbridge is always up. The beaver is a veritable Venitian, and his city is a real Venice, with its waterway and its islands of solid earth upon which stand the houses of its many citizens. The new dam which is most important to Beaver City, for it holds the water above the entrances of the score or more of houses, is a fine structure about two hundred feet in length, and nine feet in diameter at its base. Into the structure many thousand logs have been rolled, some of them coming from two or three miles up the lake, for timber is not so plentiful near to the dam as it was. The engineering genius of this huge undertaking was Shaggycoat, who sat upon his broad flat tail and directed his many workmen. Near by, seated upon the top of one of the lodges, a sentinel was always posted while they worked. He warned them of danger, and they gave their whole attention to the work. At the first suspicious sound he would bring his broad tail down upon the water with a resounding slap that could be heard all along the dam, and all through Beaver City, for water is very mobile, and conducts motion or sound easily. At this well-known signal, the workers who, a moment before, might have been lifting and tugging logs or laying on mortar, would disappear as though the lake had opened and swallowed them. This was really just what happened, but the waters did not open; they were always waiting and ready to receive their little water folks. For a few moments the lake would be as quiet as though there were not a beaver in the whole shimmering expanse, then a brown muzzle, dripping water, would be cautiously thrust up from some shady corner of the dam, and a careful reconnaissance made. When the beaver had made sure that it was a false alarm, he would call the rest and work would go on as before. Most of the conical shaped houses, of which there are now about twenty, are on islands or on the bank near the dam. They look as much like a small Indian village, as they do like the abodes of wild animals. For a long time, the overflow water from the lake troubled the beavers by wearing away their dam, but, finally, they dug a little channel in the sand around one end of the dam, and now the water runs off nicely in this artificial duct, and the dam is left unimpaired by the flow. If you could stand upon this dam, partly overgrown by willows, and see the symmetrical structure and the little lodges of Beaver City above, and the sparkling water running nicely away in the sluiceway, you would marvel at the ingenuity and patience of these ingenious rodents. But the wisest and oldest head in the colony is that of Shaggycoat, or old Shag, as I shall now call him, for he was the pioneer of the city, and his was the first lodge on the large island. Little by little he has seen his lake widen and broaden, and one by one new lodges have been reared, until now, as he sits upon his broad tail and views Beaver City from the vantage ground of the dam, he must be well satisfied with his planning, for it is all his world and he loves it as each wild creature does the element it inhabits. To his ears the sound of running water is sweetest music, and the roar of the freshet, which fills man with dismay has no terrors for him; he knows it is only his beloved water world, wild and turbulent, with the joy of melting snow, and the bliss of spring rains. He also knows that soon the buds will start and the birds sing, and he will be off for his summer ramble. He has never outgrown the habit of wandering during the summer months, but autumn will surely see him back directing repairs upon the dam and seeing that the winter supply of unpeeled logs is stored. It takes a great many logs to supply Beaver City with food now so that when the winter supply is piled up in the water in front of the dam, it would probably make several cords. If you could have seen the everchanging beauty of that forest lake through spring, summer, autumn and winter, you would not have been surprised that the beavers were well satisfied with their surroundings, or that the water seemed always to be calling to them in low sweet tones. When the spring freshet filled their lake to overflowing, the ice piled up against the dam, and the mad waters rushed through the crevasse roaring and hissing like an infuriated monster. Though the waters were angry and tossed the great cakes of ice about disdainfully, yet the foam upon its fretful surface looked soft as wool and the little water folks knew that the anger would pass, even as the fury of the spring wind. Finally the water would go down, and the lake would become clear and calm. Then it was a wonderful opal like the spring sky from which it took its color. When the warm spring winds kissed its sparkling surface, it dimpled and sparkled, and little wavelets lapped the pebbly beach with a low soft sound. Then June came with its lily pads, and the pickerel grass in the shallows along the edge, and the waters near shore were green like emerald. July brought the lilies, whose mysterious sweetness ravished the nostrils, and whose creamy white faces nestled among the green pads in sweet content. The summer passed like a wonderful dream with soft skies, balmy winds, and warm delightful waters in which to swim, but the male beavers over three years of age were always away during the summer, and the lake was left to the females and the youngsters. Soon autumn came and the maples back in the foothills were made gorgeous by the first frost. The merry fall winds soon rattled down showers of scarlet, crimson, yellow and golden leaves till the waters along the edge of the lake were as bright as the branches above. Even then the trees were all reflected in the lake, so it had its own beauty as well as that of the world above it. When the first frost came, the male beavers returned to repair the dam, and build new lodges or repair the old ones. These were active nights when the sky was so thick with stars that there was hardly room for more, and the Milky Way was bright and luminous. When the clear glass window was shut down over the lake and the beavers in their snug city were made prisoners for the winter, December had come. Then the whole lake sparkled like a jewel, and by night it vied with the stars for mysterious beauty; but soon the lake would be covered with snow, and then it would be a wonderful marble floor, smooth as a board stretching away as far as the eye could reach. There snugly locked under the ice, where not even the gluttonous wolverine can dig them out, with plenty of food for the coming winter, let us leave the inhabitants of Beaver City, happy in the assurance that spring will come again when their lake will be warm and bright, nestling like a wonderful jewel on the breast of mother earth. BOOKS BY |
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