from the boulder-pile, but in each case the sight 

 of flying beavers sent me rushing upon the scene, 

 where I beheld the cause of their desperate retreat. 

 But despite dangers they persisted until the last 

 of these aspens was harvested. During the winter 

 the bark was eaten from these, and the next season 

 their clean wood was used in the walls of a new 

 house. 



One autumn I had the pleasure of seeing some 

 immigrants pass me en route for a new home in 

 the Moraine Colony. Of course they may have 

 been only visitors, or have come temporarily to 

 assist in the harvesting; but I like to think of 

 them as immigrants, and a number of things testi- 

 fied that immigrants they were. One evening I 

 had been lying on a boulder by the stream below 

 the colony, waiting for a gift from the gods. It 

 came. Out of the water within ten feet of me 

 scrambled the most patriarchal, as well as the 

 largest, beaver that I have ever seen. I wanted 

 to take off my hat to him, I wanted to ask him to 

 tell me the story of his life, but from long habit 

 I simply lay still and watched and thought in 

 silence. He was making a portage round a cas- 

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