18 HARDY — ON THE BEAVER IN NOVA SCOTIA. 



Its eastern limitation in this Province, is the Port Medwa}'' 

 river, on which, and its tributary brooks, it is found sparsely. 

 On the Liverpool river, six miles further to the westward, and 

 throughout its parent lakes and waters, from Milton to within 

 a few miles south of Annapolis, it occurs more abundantly, and 

 is very numerous on the upper waters of the Sable river, the 

 Jordan, the Eoseway, and the Clyde, in Shelburne county. It 

 is no doubt owing to the breadth of the Province here, at its 

 western extremity, and the great extent of wild country left 

 uninterrupted, with innumerable chains of lakes and brooks, 

 that the beaver has been preserved, for it may be safely asserted 

 that to the eastward of Port Medway, not one exists to the 

 furthest cape of Cape Breton.* 



The following observations on the Beaver are from notes 

 taken during a recent canoe excursion on Lake Rossignol and 

 its tributary waters, which discharge into the Liverpool river in 

 Queen's couut}^ 



Our canoes were placed on a chain of small lakes and con- 

 necting runs, called the Sixteen Mile Brook, which, easily 

 reached by a short portage from the post road between 

 Annapolis and Liverpool, communicates with the great lakes } 

 and here I first saw the works of beaver. Passing through a 

 picturesque brook between two of the lakes, completely shaded 

 over by maples, and its banks covered with rank masses of 

 king-fern, and the twining tendrils of the Indian j)otatoe, 

 (Apios tuberosa,) now in flower, we came on a large dome of 

 sticks risinsf from the water's edsfe, the Indians at the same time 

 exclaiming " there beaver house." It was apparently (for we 

 could p.ot stop to examine it from the swiftness of the current) 

 about four feet high, and about nine or ten in diameter at the 

 base, evidently partly built in the water and parti}' on shore. 

 So rough looking and loosely constructed did it appear, that I 

 could not repress a feeling of disappointment from all that 1 

 had lieard of the marvellous construction of a beaver house. 



*Tliey were formerly numerous throughout the Province. Sir C. Lyle mentions 

 Beaver cuttings dug up in a peat hog, near the Shulionacadie, wliich the workmen had 

 supposed to have owed their origin to Indian tools. A few years since the remains of 

 a beaver dam were discovered in the brook running into the North West Arm, by the 

 road to the Dutch vilhiffc 



