THE TAKING OF THE BEAVER 107 



the beaver is fair game to the trapper. It is wit against 

 wit. To be sure, the man has superior strength, a gun, 

 and a treacherous thing called a trap. But his eyes 

 are not equal to the beaver s nose. And he hasn t that 

 familiarity with the woods to enable him to pursue, 

 which the beaver has to enable it to escape. And he 

 can t swim long enough under water to throw enemies 

 off the scent, the way the beaver does. 



Now, as he paddles along the network of streams 

 which interlace Northern forests, he will hardly be like 

 ly to stumble on the beaver-dam of last summer. Beav 

 ers do not build their houses where passers-by will 

 stumble upon them. But all the streams have been 

 swollen by fall rains ; and the trapper notices the mark 

 ings on every chip and pole floating down the full cur 

 rent. A chip swirls past white and fresh cut. Ho 

 knows that the rains have floated it over the beaver- 

 dam. Beavers never cut below their houses, but always 

 above, so that the current will carry the poles down 

 stream to the dam. 



Leaving his canoe-load behind, the trapper guard 

 edly advances within sight of the dam. If any old 

 beaver sentinel be swimming about, he quickly scents 

 the man-smell, upends and dives with a spanking blow 

 of his trowel tail on the water, which heliographs dan 

 ger to the whole community. He swims with his webbed 

 hind feet, the little fore paws being used as carriers 

 or hanging limply, the flat tail acting the faintest bit 

 in the world like a rudder; but that is a mooted ques 

 tion. The only definitely ascertained function of that 

 bat-shaped appendage is to telegraph danger to com 

 rades. The beaver neither carries things on his tail, 

 nor plasters houses with it ; for the simple reason that 



