EARLY DAY STORIES. 73 



there were many acres of swampy ground covered with big 

 grass and water plants that furnished the colony with food. 

 While beaver generally do their work in the night, they 

 sometimes are out in the day time but it is difficult to get 

 a chance to see them. I have tried several times to get 

 sight of a beaver, but succeeded only once. Several years 

 ago in Sherman county, Nebraska, I came suddenly and 

 silently upon a beaver sitting just at the edge of a pond. 

 He was a big fellow, and we did not see each other until 

 I was within a dozen feet of him as he sat at the edge of 

 the water under a bank. He made a dive into the water, 

 and swimming across the little pond went into a hole under 

 water on the opposite bank. Beaver were quite plentiful 

 here in the early days, and were probably found in all the 

 streams of the county. Some of them were trapped, but not 

 many. They are very shy and timid, and when persistently 

 trapped, or when the country begins to settle, they will 

 emigrate to new haunts. It is now against the law to take 

 them in Nebraska at any season, and I hear that there are 

 a few in the thinly settled parts of the upper Niobrara coun- 

 try and that they are increasing in numbers. There is also 

 said to be a colony of them on the Elkhorn river in Stan- 

 ton county. 



It was thought best to take a look at the country on 

 the west side of the creek, and as my comrade, Sol King, 

 could not walk very far, from the fact that he had lost a leg 

 while righting for his country during the civil war, and as 

 it was very difficult to ford the creek with a horse, he agreed 

 to keep the camp while I looked over the country to the 

 west. I went up the creek about two miles from the camp, 

 and crossing to the west side on a fallen tree, placed my- 

 self in line with certain objects on the east side of the creek 

 that had been marked a day or two before, and that could 

 be plainly seen, and tracing the line thus previously marked, 

 soon came to a section corner. It will be remembered that 



