166 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



plentiful supplies for feeding his stock in winter, and the 

 following was evidently the process. Wherever a brook 

 trickled through a valley, the beaver would bar its course 

 by its strong compact dam, thus securing sufficient back- 

 water to form a pond, on the edge of which to build its 

 dome-shaped house. Large spaces in the woods thus 

 became inundated, the drowned trees fell and decayed, 

 and freshets brought accessions of soil from the hills. 

 At length the pond filled up, and the colony migrated, 

 or were exterminated. The water drained through the 

 unrepaired dam; and on the fine alluvial soil exposed, 

 sprang up those rich waving fields of wild grass, monu- 

 ments of the former industry of the beaver, and now a 

 source of profit to its thankless destroyers. 



To return, however, to Lake Rossignol and its beavers. 

 Attracted thither by the charms of a canoe voyage on the 

 lakes at the commencement of the glorious fall, and 

 anxious to inspect the houses and dams of these curious 

 animals, we hired our two frail barks and the services of 

 three Indians at the town of Liverpool, Nova Scotia, and, 

 avoiding the ascent of the rapid river as too arduous a 

 mode of access, sent canoes and luggage by a cross road 

 to a line of waters which flowed evenly into the great 

 lake, and where we embarked for our explorations. The 

 following notes from my Camp Journal will give a nar- 

 ration of our observations and progress : — 



"August 28. 



" Encamped comfortably in a cove of the second lake 

 of the Rossignol Chain, which was reached late in the 

 evening, vid the Sixteen-Mile Lakes, where the canoes 

 were embarked. The unwonted exercise of the first long 

 day's paddling has somewhat unstcadied the hand for 



