136 THE AMERICAN BEAVER. 



turity: and, lastly, their well-known propensity to 

 pair. A fanciful notion prevails among the Indians, 

 that if young beavers, thus sent out, fail to pair, they 

 are allowed to return to the parent lodge and remain 

 until the ensuing summer; but as a mark of parental 

 disapprobation, for their ill matrimonial success, they 

 are required to do the work of repairing the dam. 

 There is another ramification of the same conceit, to 

 the effect that if they fail again to mate in the ensu- 

 ing summer, they are not allowed to return a second 

 time, but that they become from thenceforth ^'outcast 

 beavers." The existence of such a class is believed 

 in, to some extent, both by the Indians and trappers, 

 and the two notions together furnish the only founda- 

 tion for the fiction at one time believed that there was 

 a class of slave beavers.^ These "outcasts," so called, 



^ This belief in the existence of a class of slave beavers appears 

 to have been of Arabian origin. In the "Wonders of Creation," 

 by Kazwini, an Arabian author who wrote in a.d. 1288, is the 

 following account: "The beaver (kundar) is a land and water 

 animal that is found in the smaller rivers of the country Isa 

 [north of the present government of Novgorod]. He builds on 

 the bank of the river a house, and makes for himself in this an 

 elevated place in the form of a bench ; then, on the right hand, 

 about a step lower, one for his wife, and on the left, one for his 

 young ones, and on the lower part of the house, one for his ser- 

 vants. His dwelling possesses in the lower part an egress toward 

 the water, and another higher one toward the land. If, therefore, 

 an enemy comes on the water side, or the water rises, he escapes 

 by the egress leading to the land; but if the enemy comes on the 

 land side, by that which leads to the water. He nourishes himself 

 on the flesh of fishes and the wood of the Chelendech (? willow). 

 The merchants of that country are able to distinguish the skins of 

 the servants from that of the masters; the former hew the Chelen- 

 dech wood for their masters, drag it with their maw, and break it 



