DWELLINGS OF MUSKRAT AND BEAVER—GILPIN. 28t 
to their nests inside are filled with sticks and twigs of various 
trees, gnawed very short, and dragged below the surface as a 
store-house of food for the winter, the beavers eating the bark. 
Indeed, the appearance not only of the thatch of their houses, 
but of the sticks and twigs of the entire dam, and others lying 
loosely around, all nicely peeled, well prove the truth of these 
assertions. Their cream-like color contrasted with the dark 
greens of the waving grasses, as well as their inextricable inter- 
lacing, joied to the trill of the falling waters, through their 
slender barriers, the lilly pads, coating the stream like a rich car- 
pet, and the back-ground of rugged spruce firs wrapping the 
whole, as it were, ina frame, form a sylvan scene few forget. 
Our Indians tell us each house contains about five or six inmates ; 
all trees of the forest serve them in their barks as food, but the 
poplar wood seem the favorite rather than birches or maples. I 
have seen very large oaks stumped by them, but itis rare. The 
roots of the yellow water lily are a very favorite food, and are 
found growing in abundance around their houses. Though the 
beaver for its size is an extraordinarily cover-keeping animal, 
working by night, never seen by fair day-light, his presence 
is known only by his works ; the tree-stumps he leaves, or the 
houses he constructs, or his dams, sometimes sending back water 
for two or three miles, and cutting off working water from small 
sawmills erected in the woods. It is impossible from these promi- 
nent signs for him to retain his presence even in a half cultivated 
country for long. Indian hunters and the idlers will invade his 
charming home for the skin he wears, now very much fallen in 
value. I have known the indignant millwright tear up the dam 
that spoilt his water ; a settler waging war with him for flooding 
his meadows, and even the lumbermen sweep away with axes, 
the white-peeled, beautifully interlaced brush weir that stayed 
his log-rafts floating down to salt tide. Hence it is we will not 
have him long with us; civilization will sweep his wood-gnawed 
thatch from him, as well as the less-laboured bark wigwam of the 
Indians, for so many years his idle neighbors. For many years 
they have become extinct from the eastern parts of the Province, 
that is, no skins are brought to market from these parts. In 
1840, old hunter Hardwicke was supposed to have trapped the 
