104 RECENT HUNTING TRIPS. 



the middle of tlieir wattle and mud houses, and 

 whenever they are hungry, dive down into the 

 water below the ice, and fetch one of the 

 boughs from the store so providently collected 

 in the early autimm. They then gnaw the 

 bark from it at their leisure. 



Louis told me that there are seldom more 

 than two old beavers in these river bank houses, 

 with their last year's young ones. He also 

 assured me that in the early spring, before the ice 

 has broken up, beavers will gnaw a hole just the 

 size of their bodies through ice two feet in thick- 

 ness in order to procure fresh food. Whether 

 there is any truth in this story or not I cannot 

 say. Every white man I asked about it in the 

 Yukon disbelieved it, but, on the other hand, 

 Louis Cardinal, who had a wonderfully intimate 

 and accurate knowledge of all the animals of the 

 North American wilderness, declared most em- 

 phatically that he had on many occasions seen 

 beavers coming out to feed in the early spring 

 throughholeswhich they had themselves gnawed 

 through the ice. 



Besides the beavers which live along the 



