Colorado -- Description and travel; Natural history -- West (U.S.); Rocky Mountains
Beaver commonly fill their ponds by damming a brook or a river. But
this colony obtained most of its water-supply from springs poured
forth abundantly on the uppermost terrace, where the water was led
into one pond and a number of basins. Overflowing from these, it
either made a merry, tiny cascade or went to lubricate a slide on the
short slopes which led to the ponds on the terrace below. The waters
from all terraces were gathered into a large pond at the bottom. This
pond measured six hundred feet in circumference. The crooked and
almost encircling grass-grown dam was six feet high, and four hundred
feet long. In its upper edge stood the main house, which was eighty
feet high and forty feet in circumference. There was also another
house on one of the terraces.
After notching the aspens I spent some time exploring the colony
grounds and did not return to the marked trees until forty-eight hours
had elapsed. Harvest had begun, and one of the largest notched trees
had been felled and removed. Its gnawed stump was six inches in
diameter and stood fifteen inches high. The limbs had been trimmed
off, and a number of these lay scattered about the stump. The trunk,
which must have been about eighteen feet long, had disappeared, cut
into lengths of from three to six feet, probably, and started toward
the harvest pile. Wondering for which house these logs were intended,
I followed, hoping to trace and trail them to the house, or find them
_en route_. From the spot where they were cut, they had evidently been
rolled down a steep, grassy seventy-foot slope, at the bottom of this
dragged an equal distance over a level stretch among some lodge-pole
pines, and then pushed or dragged along a narrow runway that had been
cut through a rank growth of willows. Once through the willows, they
were pushed into the uppermost pond. They were taken across this,
forced over the dam on the opposite side, and shot down a slide into
the pond which contained the smaller house. Only forty-eight hours
before, the little logs which I was following were in a tree, and now
I expected to find them by this house. It was good work to have got
them here so quickly, I thought. But no logs could be found by the
house or in the pond! The folks at this place had not yet laid up
anything for winter. The logs must have gone farther.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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