By Enos A. Mills With Illustrations from Photographs by the Author Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge Mdccccxiii COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY ENOS A. MILLS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published March 1913 To J. Horace McFarland...

This book is the result of beaver studies which cover a period of twenty-seven years. During these years I have rambled through every State in the Union and visited Mexico, Canada, and Alaska. In the course of these rambles notice was taken of trees, birds, flowers, glaciers, and bears, and studious attention devoted to the beaver. No opportunity for beaver study was missed, and many a long journey was made for the purpose of investigating the conditions in live colonies or in making measurement

One September day I saw a number of beaver at work upon a half-finished house. One part of the house had been carried up about two feet above the water, and against this were leaned numerous sticks, which stood upon the top of the foundation just above water-level. After these sticks were arranged, they were covered with turf and mud which the beaver scooped from the bottom of the pond. In bringing this earth covering up, the beaver invariably came out of the water at a given point, and over a s

One bright autumn afternoon I peered down into a little meadow by a beaver pond. This meadow was grass-covered and free from willows. In it seven or eight beaver were at work along a new canal. Each kept his place and appeared to have a section in which he did his digging. For more than half an hour I watched them clawing out the earth and grass-roots and lifting it out in double handfuls and piling it in an orderly line along the canal-bank. While I was watching a worker at one end of this line

All Indian tribes in North America appear to have had one or more legends concerning the beaver. Most of these legends credit him with being a worthy and industrious fellow, and the Cherokees are said to trace their origin to a sacred and practical beaver. Many of the tribes had a legend which told that long, long ago the Great Waters surged around a shoreless world. These waters were peopled with beaver, beaver of a gigantic size. These, along with the Great Spirit, dived and brought up quantit

For three hundred years the beaver has been a popular subject for discussion. Fabulous accounts have been given concerning his works, and that which he has done has been exaggerated beyond recognition. Many of the descriptions of him are grotesque, and many accounts of his works are uncanny. His tail has been made to do the work of a pile-driver, and some of the old accounts credit him with driving stakes into the ground that were as large as a man’s thigh and five or six feet long. Stories have

Millions of beaver ponds graced America’s wild gardens at the time the first settlers came. These ragged and poetic ponds varied in length from a few feet to one mile, and in area they were from one hundred acres down to a miniature pond that half a dozen merry children might encircle. These ponds were formed by dams built by beaver, and the dams varied greatly in size and were made of poles variously combined with sticks, stones, trash, rushes, and earth. In the Bad Lands of Dakota I saw two da

One autumn I watched a beaver colony and observed the customs of its primitive inhabitants as they gathered their harvest for winter. It was the Spruce Tree Colony, the most attractive of the sixteen beaver municipalities on the big moraine on the slope of Long’s Peak. The first evening I concealed myself close to the beaver house by the edge of the pond. Just at sunset a large, aged beaver of striking, patriarchal appearance rose in the water by the house, and swam slowly, silently round the po

Two successive dry years had greatly reduced the water-level of Lily Lake, and the consequent shallowness of the water made a serious situation for its beaver inhabitants. This lake covered about ten acres, and was four feet deep in the deepest part, while over nine tenths of the area the water was two feet or less in depth. It was supplied by springs. Early in the autumn of 1911 the water completely disappeared from about one half of the area, and most of the remainder became so shallow that be

The Lily Lake beaver house, in which the old beaver spent the drouthy winter, was a large roughly rounded affair that measured twenty-two feet in diameter. It rose only four feet above the normal water-line. This house had been three times altered and enlarged, and once raised in height. Its mud walls were heavily reinforced with polelike sticks, which were placed at the junctures of the enlargements. The one large room was more than twelve feet in diameter. Near the centre stood a support for t

Realizing that the supply of aspens near the waters of the Moraine Colony close to my home was almost exhausted, I wondered whether it would be possible for the beavers to procure a sufficient supply downstream, or whether they would deem it best to abandon this old colony and migrate. Out on the plains, where cottonwoods were scarce, the beavers first cut those close to the colony, then harvested those upstream, sometimes going a mile for them, then those downstream; but rarely were the latter

Twenty-six years ago, while studying glaciation on the slope of Long’s Peak, I came upon a cluster of eight beaver houses. These crude conical mud huts were in a forest pond far up on the mountainside. In this colony of our first engineers were so many things of interest that the fascinating study of the dead Ice King’s ruins and records was indefinitely given up in order to observe Citizen Beaver’s works and ways. A pile of granite boulders on the edge of the pond stood several feet above the w

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 ancest

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-

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 al

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 “Fores