176 ROMANCE OF THE BEAVER 



the slack winter season, during whicR^ time trees 

 are cut, but the hard stumps are frozen into the 

 ground, and not until the soft rains have thawed 

 the earth can they be removed. Rotting them out 

 is a slow process involving many years during 

 which cultivation of the stump -strewn land is 

 difficult and unsatisfactory. Blasting them out is 

 far too expensive for the poor settler, so that every 

 acre of ready cleared land means a tremendous saving 

 of labour ; and what is even more important, the 

 forest land, though it may be fairly rich, does not 

 compare in fertility with that of the meadows, and 

 is of course usually so rough that cultivating is far 

 more difficult. But the farmer who thus reaped 

 the benefit of countless ages of beavers' work 

 had no thought for the little fellows. On every 

 possible occasion he trapped them, though perhaps 

 the very ones he killed were the direct descendants 

 of those that had originally built the dams which 

 had made the meadows for him and his family. 

 His house might even be built on the site of the 

 original lodges, and years later a village or a town 

 be built around the same place. Factory whistles 

 might scream to thousands of busy men and 

 women, calling them to begin or finish their day's 

 labour where formerly the evening call of the owl 

 had summoned forth the beaver to their night's 

 work. The saw mill on the old beaver pond might 

 screech as its many-toothed, buzzing saws tear 

 through the heart of the stoutest trees, in the very 



