BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS. 23 
bend country of the Missouri. The writer, unsatisfied, 
also returned with the party. Comstock again lacked 
staying qualities and made room for David Hawthorne, 
an expert in the art of trapping. Soon fresh peeled 
skins lay in hoops about the trappers’ camp. Beaver 
tail soup—a dainty dish—was served up as regularly as 
the canned pea variety at a second class hotel. When 
the warm month of May came around—the gladness 
and joy that should have been—was not here. True the 
ducks, the geese and brants returned from the far south 
land in great numbers and settled about the old dams 
as of yore. But the kindly greeting from their good 
old friends came not. The houses, battered and di- 
lapidated, seemed deserted. No more the sound of 
playful alarms on quiet evenings. No more the inspec- 
tor making his tour about the dam breasts or the repair- 
ing force making jolly over their assigned work. In 
seeking for nesting places the fowls found the dams 
broken and but a narrow stream of swift water where 
the dams once furnished such fine swimming and feed- 
ing grounds. Rank grasses could no longer grow and 
protect themselves and young in their nesting,as the 
canals were as dry as those famed ones on the fiery orb 
of Mars. The birds must move on. Stagnant and 
feetish ponds made in the dams’ ebb formed the home 
of croaking frogs, while the moulded chambers of the 
once happy beavers became the screeching place of the 
tree toad and its more hidden recesses the abode of big 
ugly green worms and chirping crickets and cockroaches. 
Why all this horrible transformation? 
Answer: That atrapper might get a few dollars 
with a blood stained curse on them. 
