Sometimes the trap was set so that the ring attached to the end of the chain, as soon as the captive dived, would slide down to the small end of a pole planted in the water, preventing the ascent of the beaver and consequently drowning it. At the lodge, rows of strong stakes were driven in such a way as to form alleys leading to the entrances through which the members of the family would have to pass to reach the house, the trap being cunningly concealed on the bottom. In winter, as it was easy to discover the lodges because the snow was melted away from above by the rising warm air, the tops were chopped in, and the beaver taken in this way. The store of winter food sticks being placed in a pile beside the lodge, the trappers often staked around it to compel the beaver to enter for food at points where traps were set. When it was driven to its bank burrows, the entrances were closed and then the occupants were dug out from above. The setting of steel traps, however, and visiting them at regular intervals was the easiest and most profitable method, for one man could take care of fifty traps or more, without great difficulty. One peculiarity of the animal was of great service to its pursuers,—it never stepped backwards. Altogether the poor creature was an easy prey to the keen hunter, and the capture of it amounted to wholesale slaughter. In disposition the beaver was gentle and shy. When caught very young, they became perfectly tame and contented. Native women sometimes nursed young captives as they would a child, till, in a few weeks, they were old enough to eat bark, when they would wean themselves. Their cry resembled that of a human infant, and their affectionate natures made them attractive and satisfactory pets. Full growth was attained at two and one-half years, and they died of old age at about fifteen. A beaver family consisted of the two parents and the several offspring under two years of age, all living in one lodge or burrow. Occasionally a male refused to pair, and then after the second season he was driven from the colony and became an outcast. Their interesting social organisation and general sagacity placed them in the very top rank among animals. This small creature, then, that offered its life as a bait to entice the white man into the depths of the wilderness, was one of the most remarkable on the continent, and its likeness, as the emblem of the American Republic, would be far more appropriate than the carrion eagle, which has little to commend it, as compared with the beaver, the model of gentleness, industry, ingenuity, and painstaking skill, and which formed a stepping-stone to the power and greatness of the Union of States now spreading from ocean to ocean. FOOTNOTES: [2] For an admirable account of the fur trade see _The American Fur Trade of the Far West_, by H. M. Chittenden. [3] See _The American Beaver and his Works_, by Lewis H. Morgan. [Illustration] CHAPTER III