I30 THB CONDOR Vol. IX 



weeks and during that time I have spent but about three nights in camp. Miss 

 Alexander has hired a man by the name of Al Hasselborg to go with us. He is an 

 accurate observer and possesses a great deal of local knowledge of the islands and is 

 altogether the best woodsman that I have ever seen. He had spent some time 

 prospecting in the interior of the island and had found three lakes, two small and 

 one large one; but he had no boat so could not tell how large they were or where 

 their outlets were. The first lake is about four or five miles due west of Mole 

 Harbor. The second one is really just a continuation of the first and together they 

 are about 3/4 or four miles long and very deep, as in some places a 100-ft. line 

 would not touch the bottom 100 yards off shore. These two lakes are connected 

 by a rapid stream and a 30-foot waterfall with the large lake, which is also very deep. 



We packed the canoe up to the first lake and then packed up some grub and 

 made camp for a few days. There were lots of beaver signs and cutting all around 

 the lake and about 10 o'clock one morning when we were out in the canoe, a beaver 

 came swimming around a bend and dove. When he came up again I began shoot- 

 ing at him with the rifle. I missed the first three times but the fourth shot just cut 

 thru the skull between his eyes. He was evidently young and foolish and had been 

 out late and was just going home or else I wouldn't have got him; because a beaver 

 is nobody's fool I can tell you. An old wise one would put a coyote way back in 

 the infant class. The lake's shore is very irregular and on many of the small points 

 you can see little padded-down places in the grass at the water's edge where a beaver 

 sits and chews the bark off of sticks. Usually there is a little pile of sticks from 

 half to two inches in diameter and six inches to two feet long lying about. These 

 are peeled and that makes them conspicuous. When eating the beaver squats and 

 hunches himself up and then takes the stick in his fore paws and keeps twisting it 

 round and round while he nips the bark off. One reminded me very much of a 

 hungry man attacking a roasting ear of corn. They cut canals back into the woods 

 for 50 feet or so, sometimes, so as to get back to the spruce trees. Tlie^^ prefer the 

 willow, but as that is only found in a few favored localities most of them cut down 

 small spruce trees. If no spruce is handy they will sometimes eat crabapple, 

 huckleberry, and, as a last resort, alder. In the big lake, where there was a large 

 stream coming in, w^e found a number of fine dams. Some of these dams were at 

 least 100 yards long and in places four or five feet high. These formed a reservoir 

 covering several acres. Above this dam there was a series of other dams; so taking 

 it all together it was the dammedest creek I ever saw. I think that the beavers 

 show their greatest engineering skill in the way that they divide the water so as 

 to keep all the dams full and water-ways full between them. They fix the dams so 

 that there is just a little water running over all the way along so that it does not 

 wash out anywhere. 



Most of the beavers lived in the holes in the bank, but others built houses. 

 These houses resemble mammoth woodrat houses, as they are six feet high and 10 

 or 12 feet across at the base. The poorer ones were just a pile of saplings and 

 sticks thrown together while the better ones looked as tho some one had shoveled 

 mud on them. As many as six or eight beavers ma^^ live together in one house. 

 They begin to come out of their houses about 6 o'clock in the evening and stay out 

 until 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning. They are very shy and if an old one sees you 

 he hunches himself up and brings his tail down with a pop on the water and you 

 think that some one shot close by. If you bother them much they will leave and 

 move to some other locality. 



We have secured six specimens so far, all males. They are all very dark seal 

 brown, almost black. There are a number back there and yet every one says that 



