The following summer was a rainy one, and the pond filled with sediment to the height of the dam. Most of this sediment came from the landslide débris or its sliding place. The old Broken Tree colony was abandoned. Different from most animals, the beaver has a permanent home. The beaver has a strong attachment, or love, for his old home, and will go to endless work and repeatedly risk dangers to avoid moving away. He will dig canals, build dams, or even drag supplies long distances by land through difficult and dangerous places that he may live on in the old place. Here his ancestors may have been born and here he may spend his lifetime. In most cases, however, a colony is not continuously occupied this long. A flood, fire, or the complete exhaustion of food may compel him to move and seek a new home. In abandoning the Broken Tree pond, one set of dwellers simply went up stream and took possession of the pond which the landslide had formed. Here they gathered supplies and dug a hole or den in the bank but they built no house. An underground tube or passageway connected this den with the bottom of the pond. The remainder of the colonists started anew about three hundred feet to the north of the old pond. Here a dam about sixty feet long was built, mostly of mud and turf excavated from the area to be filled with water for their pond. They commenced their work by digging a trench and piling the material excavated on the lower side--the beginning of the dam. This ditch was then widened and deepened until the pond was completed. All excavated material was placed upon the dam. Evidently the site for the house, as well as for the pond, was deliberately selected. The house was built in the pond alongside a spring which in part supplied the pond with water. The supply of winter food was stored in the deep hole from which the material for the house was excavated. The water from the spring checked freezing near the house and the food-pile, and prevented the ice from troubling the colonists. Beavers apparently comprehend the advantage of having a house close to a spring. This spring commonly is between the main house entrance and the winter food-pile. Their pond did not fill with sediment. As the waters came entirely from springs they were almost free of sediment. After eighteen years of use there was but a thin covering of sediment on the bottom of the pond. Neither brook nor stream entered this pond. Was this pond constructed in this place for the purpose of avoiding sediment? As beavers occasionally and with much labour build in a place of this kind, when there are other and easier near-by places in which to build, it may be that this pond was placed here because it would escape sediment. This was the founding of the Spruce Tree colony. It is still inhabited. CHAPTER V THE OTTER PLAYS ON