A NAP WITH THE BEAVERS. 249 



that this colony must have obtained from the beaver 

 congress a government subsidy. Having been ac- 

 quainted with the art of building before man mas- 

 tered it, the beaver race also probably understood 

 how to do it at little personal expense. 



The beaver appears to be distributed in consider- 

 able numbers all over the western half of Kansas, 

 although the spring floods sweep away their dams 

 almost every season. Once afterward, when lost on 

 the plains for a day, I came across a beaver dam. 

 Several hours of anxious suspense in the solitude, fear- 

 ing to meet man lest he should prove a savage, begot 

 a strange feeling of companionship when I came in 

 sight of the rude structure of logs. If not civiliza- 

 tion, it was a close imitation of it, and I laid down 

 and fell into a refreshing sleep, soothed, in the fan- 

 tasies of Dreamland, with the whir of looms and hum 

 of factory life. 



