BEAVER CANALS, MEADOWS, AND TRAILS. 199 



There is an extensive canal on Carp River a short 

 distance below the bend represented in Plate XIV. It 

 runs through low, swampy ground, which is covered, 

 for one-quarter of its length, with a thicket of alder so 

 dense that it was difficult to follow the channel for the 

 purposes of measurement. The river, which at this 

 point is a hundred feet wide, more or less, is bordered 

 with alder and cranberry bushes, and with a forest of 

 tamaracks. Back of these, some six hundred feet, is the 

 first rising ground covered with deciduous trees; to 

 reach which the canal was constructed. At the dis- 

 tance of one hundred and eleven feet from its com- 

 mencement in the river there was a rise in the surface 

 level of about a foot, which made necessary either a 

 dam, or an additional foot of excavation, to furnish a 

 sufficient depth of water. A dam twenty-five feet long, 

 across the canal and the grounds adjacent, was the ex- 

 pedient adopted. The second level of the canal, thus 

 raised a foot above the first, continued one hundred 

 and seventy-eight feet, where a second rise occurs of 

 about the same amount, and where a second dam 

 was constructed thirty feet long. As the ground on 

 both sides of the canal was swampy, with water in 

 pools here and there, it was only necessary to exca- 

 vate a channel of the requisite depth to obtain a suffi- 

 cient supply of water by filtration from the adjoining 

 lands. Up to the first dam the canal was filled from 

 the river, and consequently varied in depth with the 

 rise and fall of the stream; but above this, where it 



feet to three feet six inches in height. The chamber of the lodge 

 at the canal last described was four feet nine inches in its largest 

 diameter, four feet six inches in its transverse, and one foot three 

 inches high. 



