BEAVER CANALS, MEADOWS, AND TRAILS. 203 



years a missionary among the Ojibwa Indians, who 

 went upon the island and examined them. Beaver 

 excavations on a large scale are very common in dis- 

 tricts favorable for their occupation, and they are 

 greatly diversified in character. At the upper end of 

 the principal pond at the gorge, where the series of 

 dams are found, there is a canal two hundred and 

 fifty feet long, which enters the pond where it is too 

 shallow for a beaver to swim below the surface of the 

 water. To correct this inconvenience a channel was 

 excavated in the bed of the pond for about fifty feet 

 in length, the materials from which were thrown up 

 on either side. 



Beaver meadows are properly among the works of 

 the beavers, although consequences, merely, of their 

 labor for other objects. Where dams are constructed, 

 the waters first destroy the timber within the area cov- 

 ered by the ponds. When the adjacent lands are low, 

 they are occasionally overflown after heavy rains, and 

 are at all times saturated with water from the ponds. 

 In course of time, the trees within the area affected 

 are totally destroyed; in place of which a ra;nk, lux- 

 uriant grass springs up. A level meadow, in the 

 strict and proper sense of the term, is thus formed; 

 although much unlike the meadow of the cultivated 

 farm. At a distance they appear to be level and 

 smooth; but when you attempt to walk over them, 

 they are found to be a series of hummocks formed of 

 earth and a mass of coarse roots of grass rising about 

 a foot high, while around each of them there is a 

 narrow strip of bare and sunken ground. The bare 

 spaces, which are but a few inches wide, have the 

 appearance of innumerable water-courses through 



