142 ROMANCE OF THE BEAVER 



longer hold back the water, the pond gets lower 

 and lower until finally it vanishes. 



So much for the dam ; now let us watch the pond 

 itself throughout its course of existence. It began 

 as a stream whose banks were probably wooded. 

 As the water rose and flooded the land the trees, 

 which had not been cut for food by the beavers, 

 becoming choked by water soon died, and as the 

 pond grew with each year's additions to the dams, 

 more and more trees were cut down for food and 

 killed by water. What started as a pond of perhaps 

 fifty feet wide and covering far less than an acre 

 becomes a lake of fair size. Gradually the trees 

 that have died fall and no trace of them is seen 

 above water. Their roots may remain hidden in the 

 ground to be dug up later as proof of the previous 

 existence of the trees. Nothing remains to break 

 the smooth surface of the lake except perhaps one 

 or more beaver islands on which the lodges were 

 built. After the place has been occupied by many 

 generations of beaver it is abandoned owing to lack 

 of food, or for the more dismal reason that the 

 trapper had paid his visits of destruction to the 

 peaceful colony, and the pond of maybe ten or a 

 hundred years' growth slowly subsides. During all 

 these years there has been a rich land-forming 

 process going along in an automatic way. The 

 growing vegetation, having been killed by the rising 

 water, has decomposed. Wood and leaves, grasses 

 and roots, and even stones have become a homo- 



