A large harvest of aspen and willow was gathered for winter. Daily visits to the scene of the harvest enabled me to understand many of the methods and much of the work that otherwise would have gone on unknown to me. Early in the harvest an aspen cluster far downstream was cut. Every tree in this cluster and every near-by aspen was felled, dragged to the brook, and in this, with wrestling, pushing, and pulling, taken upstream through shallow water,--for most mountain streams are low during the autumn. In the midst of this work the entrance or inlet of the canal was blocked and the bow dam was cut. The water in the brook was almost doubled in volume by the closing of the canal, thereby making the transportation of aspens upstream less laborious. [Illustration: THE DEAD-WOOD DAM, LOOKING SOUTH] When the downstream aspens at last reposed in a pile beside the house, harvesting was briskly begun in the aspens along the shore of the new pond. Then came another surprise. The bow dam was repaired, and the canal not only opened, but enlarged so that almost all the water in the brook was diverted into the canal, through which it flowed into the new pond. The aspens cut on the shore of the new pond were floated across it, then dragged up the canal into the old pond. Evidently the beavers not only had again turned the water into the canal that they might use it in transportation, but also had increased the original volume of water simply to make this transportation of the aspens as easy as possible. Their new works enabled the colonists to procure nearly five hundred aspens for the winter. All these were taken up the new canal, dragged over the bow and the main dams, and piled in the water by the house. In addition to these, the aspens brought from downstream made the total of the harvest seven hundred and thirty-two trees; and with these went several hundred small willows. Altogether these made a large green brush-pile that measured more than a hundred feet in circumference, and after it settled averaged four feet in depth. This was the food-supply for the oncoming winter. The upper surface of this stood about one foot above the surface of the water. Five years after the completion of this dead-wood dam it was so overgrown with willows and grass that the original material--the dead tree-trunks that formed the major portion of it--was completely covered over. The new pond was used but one season. All the aspens that were made available by the dam of the pond were cut in one harvest. The place is now abandoned, old ponds and new. The Ruined Colony