In the new Moraine Colony one of the houses was torn to pieces by some
animal, probably a bear. This was before Thanksgiving. About
mid-winter a prospector left his tunnel a few miles away, came to the
colony and dynamited a house, and "got seven of them." Next year two
houses were built on the ruins of the two just fallen. That year's
harvest-home was broken by deadly attacks of enemies. In gathering the
harvest the beavers showed a preference for some aspens that were
growing in a moist place about one hundred feet from the water.
Whether it was the size of these or their peculiar flavor that
determined their election in preference to nearer ones, I could not
determine. One day, while several beavers were cutting here, they were
surprised by a mountain lion which leaped upon and killed one of the
harvesters. The next day the lion surprised and killed another. Two or
three days later a coyote killed one on the same blood-stained spot,
and then overtook and killed two others as they fled for the water. I
could not see these deadly attacks from the boulder-pile, but in each
case the sight of flying beavers sent me rushing upon the scene, where
I beheld the cause of their desperate retreat. But despite dangers
they persisted until the last of these aspens was harvested. During
the winter the bark was eaten from these, and the next season their
clean wood was used in the walls of a new house.
One autumn I had the pleasure of seeing some immigrants pass me _en
route_ for a new home in the Moraine Colony. Of course they may have
been only visitors, or have come temporarily to assist in the
harvesting; but I like to think of them as immigrants, and a number of
things testified that immigrants they were. One evening I had been
lying on a boulder by the stream below the colony, waiting for a gift
from the gods. It came. Out of the water within ten feet of me
scrambled the most patriarchal, as well as the largest, beaver that I
have ever seen. I wanted to take off my hat to him, I wanted to ask
him to tell me the story of his life, but from long habit I simply lay
still and watched and thought in silence. He was making a portage
round a cascade. As he scrambled up over the rocks, I noticed that he
had but two fingers on his right hand. He was followed, in single
file, by four others; one of these was minus a finger on the left
hand. The next morning I read that five immigrants had arrived in the
Moraine Colony. They had registered their footprints in the muddy
margin of the lower pond. Had an agent been sent to invite these
colonists, or had they come out of their own adventurous spirit? The
day following their arrival I trailed them backward in the hope of
learning whence they came and why they had moved. They had traveled in
the water most of the time; but in places they had come out on the
bank to go round a waterfall or to avoid an obstruction. Here and
there I saw their tracks in the mud and traced them to a beaver