that the food trees near the water by an old colony 

 become scarce through excessive cutting, fires, or 

 tree diseases. In cases of this kind the colonists 

 must go a long distance for their supplies, or move. 

 They prefer to stay at the old place, and will work 

 for weeks and brave dangers to be able to do 

 this. They will build a dam, dig a new canal, 

 clear a difficult right-of-way to a grove of food 

 saplings, and then drag the harvest a long dis- 

 tance to the water; and now and then do all these 

 for just one more harvest, one more year in the 

 old home. 



The Moraine Colony had lost its former great- 

 ness. Instead of the several ponds and the eight 

 houses of which it had consisted twenty years be- 

 fore, only one house and a single pond remained, 

 The house was in the deep water of the pond, 

 about twenty feet above the dam. A vigorous 

 brook from Chasm Lake, three thousand feet 

 above, ran through the pond and poured over the 

 dam near the house. The colony was on a delta 

 tongue of a moraine. Here it had been estab- 

 lished for generations. It was embowered in a 

 young pine forest and had ragged areas of willows 



142 



