SAMUEL HEARNE's ARTICLE ON THE BEAVER. 309 



always entered at their own door without having any further 

 connection with their neighbors than a friendly intercourse; and 

 to join their united labors in erecting their separate habitations, 

 and building their dams when required. It is difficult to say 

 whether their interest on other occasions was any way recipro- 

 cal. The Indians of my party killed twelve old beavers, and 

 twenty-five young- and half-grown ones, out of the houses above 

 mentioned ; and on examination found that several had escaped 

 their vigilance, and could not be taken but at the expense of 

 more trouble than would be sufficient to take double the number 

 in a less difficult situation.^ 



Travellers who assert that the beaver have had doors to their 

 houses, one on the land side, and the other next the water, seem 

 to be less acquainted with these animals than others who assign 

 them an elegant suite of apartments. Such a proceeding would 

 be quite contrary to their manner of life, and at the same time 

 would render their houses of no use either to protect them from 

 their enemies, or guard them against the extreme of culd in 

 winter. 



The quiquehatches or wolvereens, are great enemies to the 

 beaver; and if there were a passage into their houses on the land 

 side, would not leave one of them alive wherever they came. 



I cannot refrain from smiling when I read the accounts of dif- 

 ferent authors who have written on the economy of these ani- 

 mals, as there seems to be a contest between them who shall 

 most exceed in fiction. But the compiler of the "Wonders of Nature 

 and Art" seem.s, in my opinion, to have succeeded less in this re- 

 spect; as he has not only collected all the fictions into which 

 other writers on the subject have run, but has so greatly im- 

 proved on them, that little remains to be added to his account of 

 the beaver besides a vocabulary of their language, a code of their 

 laws, and a sketch of their religion, to make it the most complete 

 natural history of that animal which can possibly be offered to 

 the public 



There cannot be a greater imposition, or indeed a grosser insult 

 on common understanding, than the wish to make us believe the 



1 The difficulty here alluded to was the numberless vaults the beaver had 

 in the sides of the pond, and the immeuse thickness ol the house in some 

 parts. 



