TRAPPING UP LITTLE OTTER 167 



all we could do to make headway. Then slack- 

 water and "sign" for a few more traps up to the 

 torn water of Dover Rapids, the busy scene of 

 many manufactures in old times, all deserted now 

 and silent but for the rush of the rapids and the 

 roar of the cataract, no vestige left but a rusted 

 shaft, a broken wheel, a grass-grown embankment 

 — memorials of departed industries and dead 

 hopes. 



We lugged and dragged our boats and cargoes 

 around the falls and launched them again in slack 

 water, reaching in lazy loops to the site of the old 

 Boston Iron Company's forges. A little below it 

 we rounded a long bend half encircling the Old 

 Indian Garden, where they say was an Indian 

 cornfield. There was a more authentic memorial 

 of times almost as old in the venerable tree, living 

 and standing with a deep notch cut in it with the 

 plain marks of a beaver's teeth. An old man, a 

 son of the first settler at this place, told me that 

 the last trout of Little Otter were caught here, and 

 were plenty enough in his father's day, but I never 

 found any one old enough to remember seeing a 

 beaver. Hard by on the flats of Mud Creek was 

 a great haunt of these animals, long ago trapped 

 to extermination by Iroquois and Waubanakee 

 and adventurous white fur-hunters. The levels 

 were flooded by dams that can still be traced, and 

 ditching the alluvial soil brings to light a pave- 



