20 ROMANCE OF THE BEAVER 



into the water. Often a great colony of many 

 members is lodged in one house. But, if they be 

 incommoded by the narrowness of the place, the 

 younger ones depart of their own accord and con- 

 struct houses for themselves." Allowing for slight 

 inaccuracies due to translation, this is a remarkably 

 accurate description and shows what careful 

 observers were those sturdy, self-sacrificing priests 

 who did so much for Canada in her early develop- 

 ment. It is all the more extraordinary when we 

 consider how natural history subjects were treated 

 in those days. 



The inside of a beaver's lodge is simplicity 

 itself. There is only one chamber, unless possibly 

 two lodges being built adjoining one another may 

 have the rooms connecting. However, this is a 

 condition I have never seen. The size varies, 

 according to conditions, some being as much as 

 twelve feet or more in diameter,* but an ordinary 

 house built to accommodate a family of six would 

 have a room about four or five feet long and 

 rather less in width, with the ceiling at the highest 

 point a little over two feet. The ceiling is fairly 

 smooth, all projecting sticks and roots being care- 

 fully cut off. There is, indeed, every evidence to 

 show that the interior is really made and finished 

 after the wall or the mound has been more or 

 less completed. The fact that the sticks are so 



* Mills gives the size of the chambers as being ** from three to 

 twenty feet across." 



