172 RECENT HUNTING TRIPS. 



no more than eight or nine degrees of frost. As 

 we neared the mountains the weather became 

 clondy, sleety snow fell from time to time, and 

 the water seemed to get colder. 



On September 3rd we passed a very remark- 

 able beaver dam. A backwater of the river, 

 about twenty-five yards wide, had been very 

 strongly dammed, and the level of the water 

 behind it raised about five feet. 



This dam had been carried on one side to the 

 foot of a steep cliff, but was continued from the 

 other through the swamp caused by the overflow 

 of the pool above it, for a distance of quite 

 seventy yards, in the form of a mud embank- 

 ment, designed to minimise leakage. In the 

 swamp and just on the edge of the lake above 

 the main dam was a very large house, as large a 

 one, Louis said, as he had ever seen. This 

 house, including all the mud and sticks used to 

 form its base, was twenty-two paces in cir- 

 cumference and about six feet in height. 



On the evening of the day on which we 

 passed the big beaver dam, we camped on the 

 edge of a willow swamp, in which tracks of 



