Subjected thus to much inconvenience and discomfort by those valuable little animals, we could but admire their wisdom in choosing places for their subaqueous homes. They feed upon the bark of the alder, the poplar, the birch, and of some other trees. These grew where they constructed their dam and along the margin of the pond of water thus formed. They cut down these trees by gnawing entirely around their trunks, then they cut off branches and sections of the trunks of the trees, and drew them into their houses under the ice. Most trees cut by the beaver are of small diameter. I once measured one beaver stump and found it to be fourteen inches in diameter. I still have in my possession a section of a white cedar stump measuring seventeen inches in circumference that had been gnawed off by beavers. It is the only cedar tree I have ever known to have been cut down by these wise little creatures. CHAPTER VI. A Birthday Supper. Flambeau Farm was located on the right bank of Chippewa River opposite the mouth of Flambeau River. There old man Butler kept a ranch for the especial accommodation of lumbermen and land hunters, who included nearly everyone who came that way. It was at the end of the wagon road leading from Chippewa Falls and from other civilized places. Canoes, dugouts, batteaus--all started from Butler's ranch at Flambeau Farm for operations up the Flambeau and its tributaries, or for either up or down the Chippewa and its branches. One rainy afternoon in October our party of three started from Butler's ranch in a dugout (a long, narrow canoe hewn out of a pine tree), to pole down the Chippewa River to the mouth of Jump River, a distance of about ten miles. Notwithstanding the rain, everything went smoothly for the first hour, when, without warning, the bow of the canoe struck the edge of a sand bar which caused the tottlish craft to tip. The man in the stern jumped overboard to save it from capsizing, expecting to strike his feet on the sand bar, but, in the meantime, the frail craft had drifted away from the bar, and we were floating over deep water which resulted in our comrade's disappearing under the surface. He soon rose hatless, and with a few strokes swam to where he seized the stern of the boat to which he was obliged to cling until we could paddle to the shore, as any attempt on his part to have climbed in would have resulted in capsizing the boat, and would have cost us all of our supplies.