BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS. 29 
dam construction were of all sizes some of them weigh- 
ing all the way from fifty to one hundred pounds. How 
they moved these boulders was a debatable question 
and one not easily answered except by persons seeing 
the animals at work. These dams backed water fully 
as high as brush and mud breasts so commonly used 
by the beavers in the construction of dams for the 
safety of their winter sustenance. Pebbles and mud 
mixed with a kind of grass served as chinking and the 
regular form of runways used in the ordinary dam where 
communication is kept up between the scattered families 
in their visiting tours. 
In spreading out a line of beaver traps around the 
stone dams, I entrusted the work to the two partners 
who were amateurs in that calling. The next morning 
we were convinced that steel traps were of no particu- 
lar concern or curiosity to the beavers of White Earth 
River. No beings could have devised more grotesque 
ways of showing their contempt for their would be per- 
secutors and destroyers than did these animals at the 
coarse work of the two amateur trappers. In nearly 
every case the traps were found sprung with a peeled 
white stick gripped in the closed iron jaws. Some of 
them were buried out of sight under a heavy plastering 
of mud, while other cases the traps were merely turned 
up side down with fresh beaver manure contemptuously 
deposited thereon. Everywhere along the trap line the 
beaver had evidently been in a sportive mood and gave 
a jocular turn to the crude attempts of the heartless and 
greedy humans to encompass their lives. 
The beavers being thoroughly on their guard but lit- 
tle headway was made in trapping them so the camp 
