The Zoologist — January, 1870. 1969 



contain a vein of fiction. Mr. G. M. Sproat has gathered some of this 

 information into his excellent ' Scenes and Studies of Savage Life,' 

 to which I refer. The beavers lie in these houses, as the Indian 

 expresses it, " like boys," but when the female has young ones she 

 goes into a separate bed or chamber, I could not ascertain which. 

 There is no story in a beaver-house for convenience of change in case 

 of floods ; the waste-way is generally' sufficient to carry off any extra- 

 ordinary quantity of water. In the Alberni country, at least, the 

 houses on the banks of lakes are abandoned when the water is very 

 high ; and the beavers go to small streams, which they form into a 

 succession of diminutive lakes ; in these they breed*. He sleeps during 

 the day, and comes out at night to feed. He cannot see far, but he is 

 keen of scent. The Opicheshaht approach to leeward at night, and spear 

 the beaver from a canoe as he floats eating a branch taken from the 

 shore ; or they shoot him when he is in shallow water, but not in deep 

 water, as he sinks on receiving the shot. They also block up the 

 opening to his house, break through the wall, and shoot or spear him. 



The flesh of the beaver, especially when first smoked and then 

 roasted, is not at all unwelcome as an article of food. The tail, when 

 boiled, is a noted article of trappers' luxury, though, forsooth, if the 

 truth must be told, rather gristly and fat, and rather too much for the 

 stomach of any one but a north-western hunter or explorer. " He 

 is a devil of a fellow," they say on the Rocky Mountain slopes; "he 

 can eat two beavers' tails ! " The scrapings of a beaver's skin form 

 one of the strongest descriptions of glue. The Indians at Fort 

 M'Leod's Lake use it to paint their paddles ; and the water does not 

 seem to affect it. 



AVhen beaver was thirty shillings per pound Rocky Mountain 

 beavers were ]nled up on each side of a trade gun until they were on 

 a level with the muzzle, and this was the price ! The muskets cost 

 in England some fifteen shillings. These were the days of the " free 

 trapper," — ;)oyous,^brave, generous, and reckless, — the hero of romance, 

 round whom many a tale of daring circles, the love of the Indian 

 damsel, the beau ideal of a man, in ihe eyes of the half-breed, whose 

 ambition never rose higher than a coiireiir des bois — a class of men 

 who, with all their failings, we cannot but be sorry to see disappear- 

 ing from the fur-countries. The fall of beavers' peltry rang their 

 death-knell ; and, as a separate profession, trapping is almost extinct, 

 being nearly altogether followed, at uncertain spells, by the Indians 



* Sproat, lib. cit. 249. 

 SECO.ND SERIES — VOL. V. D 



