LAKE DWELLERS. 177 



structure. Its site was a dismal one. The surrounding 

 forest had been burnt ages since, for there was no char- 

 coal left on the stems, which were bleached and hard as 

 adamant. A few alders, swamp maples, and briers 

 fringed the brook, the banks of which were overgrown 

 with tall grass, flags, and royal fern. Moose had re- 

 cently passed through, browsing on the juicy stems of 

 the red maples. It was a large house ; its diameter at 

 the water line nearly eighteen feet, and it was nearly 

 five feet in height. On the outside the sticks were 

 thrown somewhat loosely, but, as we unpiled them and 

 examined the structure more closely, the work appeared 

 better, the boughs laid more horizontally, and firmly 

 bound in with mud and grass. About two feet from the 

 top we unroofed the chamber, and presently disclosed the 

 interior arrangements. 



" The chamber — there was but one — was very low, 

 scarcely two feet in height, though about nine feet in 

 diameter. It had a gentle slope upwards from the water, 

 the margin of which could be just seen at the edge. 

 There were two levels inside, one, which we will term 

 the hall, a sloping mudbank on which the animal emerges 

 from the subaqueous tunnel and shakes himself, and the 

 other an elevated bed of boughs ranged round the back 

 of the chamber, and much in the style of a guard-bed — 

 i.e., the sloping wooden trestle usually found in a military 

 guard-room. The couch was comfortably covered with 

 lengths of dried grass and rasped fibres of wood, similar 

 to the shavings of a toy-broom. The ends of the timbers 

 and brushwood, which projected inwards, were smoothly 

 gnawed ofi" all round. There were two entrances — the 

 one led into the water at the edge of the chamber and 



