The Moraine colonists mastered the situation in their place with the most audacious piece of work I have ever known beavers to plan and accomplish. About one hundred and thirty feet south of the old pond was a grove of aspens. Between these and the pond was a small bouldery flat that had a scattering of dead and standing spruces and young lodge-pole pines. A number of fallen spruces lay broken among the partly exposed boulders of the flat. One day I was astonished to find that a dam was being built across this flat, and still more astonished to discover that this dam was being made of heavy sections of fire-killed trees. Under necessity only will beavers gnaw dead wood, and then only to a limited extent. Such had been my observations for years; but here they were cutting dead, fire-hardened logs in a wholesale manner. Why were they cutting this dead wood, and why a dam across a rocky flat,--a place across which water never flowed? A dam of dead timber across a dry flat appeared to be a marked combination of animal stupidity,--but the beavers knew what they were doing. After watching their activities and the progress of the dam daily for a month, I realized that they were doing development work, with the intention of procuring a food-supply. They completed a dam of dead timber. At least two accidents happened to the builders of this dead-wood dam. One of these occurred when a tree which the beavers had gnawed off pinned the beaver that had cut it between its end and another tree immediately behind the animal. The other accident was caused by a tree falling in an unexpected direction. This tree was leaning against a fallen one that was held several feet above the earth by a boulder. When cut off, instead of falling directly to the earth it slid alongside the log against which it had been leaning and was shunted off to one side, falling upon and instantly killing two of the logging beavers. The dam, when completed, was eighty-five feet long. It was about fifty feet below the main pond and sixty feet distant from the south side of it. Fifty feet of the new dam ran north and south, parallel to the old one; then, forming a right angle, it extended thirty-five feet toward the east. It averaged three feet in height, being made almost entirely of large chunks, dead-tree cuttings from six to fifteen inches in diameter and from two to twelve feet long. It appeared a crude windrow of dead-timber wreckage. [Illustration: Moraine Colony with Dead-Wood Dam] The day it was completed the builders shifted the scene of activity to the brook, a short distance below the point where it emerged from the main pond. Here they placed a small dam across it and commenced work on a canal, through which they endeavored to lead a part of the waters of the brook into the reservoir which their dead-wood dam had formed.