354 AMERICAN BEAVER. 



A small stick, four or five inches long, is che^'ed at one end, and that 

 part dipped in the castoreum, which is generally kept in a small horn. 

 The stick is then placed with the anointed end abov'e water, and the 

 other end do^vniwards. The Beaver can smell the castoreum at least 

 one hundred }'ards, makes towards it at once, and is generally caught. 



Where Beavers have not been disturbed or hunted, and are abun- 

 dant, they rise nearly half out of water at the first smell of the casto- 

 reum, and become so excited that they are heard to cry aloud, and 

 breathe hard to catch the odour as it floats on the air. A good trap- 

 per used to catch about eighty Beavers in the autumn, sixty or seventy 

 in the spring, and upwards of three hundred in the summer, in the 

 mountains ; taking occasionally as many as five hundred in one year. 

 Sixty or seventy Beaver skins are required to make a pack weighing 

 one hundred pounds ; which, when sent to a good market, is worth, 

 even now, from three to four hundred dollars. 



The Indians occasionally destroy Beaver-dams in order to capture these 

 animals, and have good dogs to aid them in this purpose. The Moun- 

 tain Indians, ho\vever, are not trappers. 



Sometimes the Indians of the Prairies break open Beaver lodges in the 

 summer-time, as, during winter they are usually frozen hard. The Bea- 

 ver is becoming very scarce in the Rocky Mountains, so much so, that if 

 a trapper now secures one hundred in the winter and spring hunt, he is 

 considered fortunate. 



Formerly, when the fur was high in price, and the animals abundant, 

 the trading companies were wont to send as many as thirty or forty men, 

 each with from six to twelve traps and two good horses : when arrived 

 at a favourable spot to begin their work, these men erected a camp, and 

 each one sought alone for his game, the skins of which he brought to 

 camp, where a certain number of men always remained to stretch and 

 dry them. 



The trappers subsist principally upon the animals they kill, having a 

 rifle and a pair of pistols with them. After a successful hunt, on meet- 

 ing each other at the camp, they have a " frolic " as they term it. 



Some old and wary Beavers are so cunning, that on finding the bait 

 they cover it over, as if it M^ere on the ground, with sticks, &c., deposit 

 their own castoreum on the top, and manage to remove the trap. This 

 is often the case when the Beaver has been hunted previousl)'. In places 

 ■where they have remained undisturbed, but few escape the experienced 

 trapper. The trappers are not very unfrequently killed by the Indians, 

 and their occupation is one involving toil and hazard. They rarely gain 

 a competence for their old age, to say nothing of a fortune, and in fact 



