ME. B. BROWN ON THE BEAVEE. 



369 



Company's Service, and to all appearance most careful and trust- 

 worthy, details are given differing somewhat from those related by 

 Messrs. Green (in the foregoing paper) and Tod. 



"When I lived among the Opicheshaht Indians, at the head of 

 the Alberni Canal, V. I., I heard much about Attoh, the Beaver, but 

 remarkably little to the credit of its sagacity. They look upon it 

 as rather a common-place animal, requiring no particular skill to 

 trap. They used to tell us all sorts of stories about it ; but I 

 think they all 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 iu 

 these houses, as the Indian expresses it, " like boys ; " but when 

 the female has young ones she goes into a separate bed or cham- 

 ber, 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 suflBcient to carry off any extraordinary 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 into 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, for- 

 sooth, 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. " Re is a devil of a fellow," they say on the Eocky 

 Mountain slopes ; " he can eat two leavers' 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. 



When beaver was 30s. per lb. Eocky-Mountain beavers were 

 piled 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 

 » Sproat, lib. cit. 249. 



