LAKE DWELLERS. 183 



it had been left in the evening moored at the edge of the 

 lake nearest the camps, and about a quarter of a mile 

 from the nearest beaver house, the poles lying on it. 

 Next morning, on going down to the raft the poles were 

 missing, so, cutting fresh ones, he started with the Indians 

 towards the houses. There, to his astonishment, was one 

 of the poles, coolly deposited on the top of a house. 



Besides the house, the beaver has another place of 

 residence in the summer, and of retreat in the winter, 

 should his house be broken into. In the neighbourhood 



o 



of the house long burrows, broad enough for the beaver 

 to turn in with ease, extend from ten to twenty feet in 

 the bank, and have their entrance at a considerable depth 

 below the surface of the water. To these they invariably 

 fly when surprised in their houses. 



One of the principal causes which have so nearly led 

 to the extermination of the beaver, was the former demand 

 for the castoreum, and the discovery that it could be used 

 as an unfailing bait for the animal itself This substance 

 is contained in two small sacs near the root of the 

 tail, and is of an orange colour. Now seldom em- 

 ployed in pharmacology for its medicinal properties 

 (stimulant and anti-spasmodic), being superseded by 

 more modern discoveries, it is still used in trapping the 

 animal, as the most certain bait in existence."'"" It is said 



* Erman thus notices it in his Siberian travels : — " There is hardly any 

 drug which recommends itself to man so powerfully by its impression on 

 the external senses as this. The Ostyaks were acquainted with its virtues 

 from the earliest times ; and it was related here (Obclorsk) that they keep a 

 supply of it in every yurt, that the women may recover their strength more 

 quickly after child-birth. In like manner the Kosaks and Russian traders 

 have exalted the beaver-stone into a panacea. 



" To the sentence * God arose, and our enemies were scattered/ the Sibe- 

 rians add, very characteristically, the apocryphal interpolation, ' and we are 

 free from head-ache.' To ensure this most desirable condition, every one 



