While the beavers were working on a dam which was to give them ample water in the pond to prevent its freezing to the bottom, a trapper came into the region. He lingered and broke and rebroke the dam three or four times. When he finally left, autumn was half gone and preparations for winter in the new colony were only well begun. The dam was still low and uncompleted. As yet they had not begun cutting and storing aspen for their winter’s food supply. These beavers had been industrious. They had planned well. But it was a case of one misfortune quickly following another. A severe cold wave still further and seriously handicapped the harvest gathering of the colonists. The quieter reaches of the stream were frozen over and a heavy plating of ice was left on the pond. They would have difficulty transporting their food-cut aspens under such conditions. Winter supplies for this colony--green aspen or birch trees--must be had. Ordinarily, beavers cut the trees most easily obtained: first those on the shore of the pond, then those up stream, and finally those on near-by, down-hill slopes. Rarely does a beaver go fifty feet from the water. But if necessary he will go down stream and float trees against the current, or drag trees up steep slopes. This pond did not have, as is common, a border of aspen trees. Late October I visited this new wilderness home. In the lower end of the frozen pond was a two-foot hole in the ice. This had been gnawed by the beavers, but for what purpose I could not then imagine. One crew of loggers had started to work in a grove about two hundred feet from the hole in the ice. They were cutting aspens that were about four inches in diameter and twelve feet high. But before dragging them to the pond an opening or trailway through the woods had been cleared. Every bush in the way was cut off, every obstructing log cut in two and the ends rolled aside. Dragging their tree cuttings to the pond was slow, hard work, and it was also dangerous work for a slow-moving beaver to go so far from the water. A beaver is heavy bodied and short-legged. With webbed hind feet he is a speedy swimmer, but on land he is a lubber and moves slowly and with effort. A few days later the purpose of the hole in the ice of the frozen pond was made plain. A freshly swept trail in the snow led to it out of the woods. The beavers were taking their green aspen cuttings through the hole into the pond for their winter’s food. They had begun storing winter food at last. I followed the trail back to where a number of aspens had been cut. Their stumps were about fifteen inches above the snow. Two trees still lay where they fell. These were about six inches in diameter and perhaps twenty feet long. Preparatory to being dragged to the pond they had been gnawed into sections of from three to six feet.