CHANGES IN THE COUNTRY EFFECTED BY BEAVER. 211 



we rested to dine at a marsliy meadow formed by 

 the damming up of the stream by beaver, exactly 

 similar to those we noticed near Dog Eiver and at 

 Edmonton. But now these places were of the greatest 

 value to us, for they afforded almost the only open 

 grassy spaces we found with pasturage for our horses 

 until reaching the mountains. They were very com- 

 mon along our track, the grassy mound and bank 

 across showing the old beaver house and dam in most 

 cases. Nearly every stream between the Pembina and 

 the Athabasca — except the large river McLeod — ap- 

 peared to have been destroyed by the agency of these 

 animals. The whole of this region is little more than 

 a succession of Y>^ne swamps, separated by narrow 

 ridges of higher ground, and it is a curious question 

 whether that enormous tract of country, marked 

 *' Swampy" in the maps, has not been brought* to this 

 condition by the work of beaver, who have thus 

 destroyed, by their own labour, the streams necessary 

 to their existence. C') 



On the evening of this same day we encamped 

 early in a little open space on the bank of a small 

 stream, one of the very few we met with in this j)art. 

 Cheadle and The Assiniboine started up the river in 

 search of beaver, but the former, seeing some trout 

 rising, turned back in order to fish for them, and The 

 Assiniboine went on alone. The camp was made, 



(^) Hugh Miller explains the formation of peat-mosses in Scotland 

 in a similar manner. The timber felled by the Romans to make 

 roads through the forest dammed up the watercourses ; pools were 

 thus formed, which were gradually converted into mosses by tlie 

 growth and decay of aquatic plants. 



o 2 



