REBUILDING A BEAVER COLONY 127 
Beavers, like people, occasionally settle in 
scenes formerly occupied by their kind, and 
build among the ruins of the long ago. Many 
a beaver colony, like many an ancient city, has 
one or more cities buried beneath it. 
A few days after seeing the big old beaver at 
work on the dam I discovered him digging in a 
canal all alone. Tracks showed that other 
beavers had been working in the canal, but 
just why this one was so bold and showed him- 
self during the daytime I could not guess. 
That these beavers were at work on a canal 
left no doubt about their having come to stay. 
Meantime, the beavers occupied the old house 
and pond while making this canal and doing 
other pioneer settlement work. They cleaned 
it out and patched it up for a temporary camp 
only. 
A canal is one of the best exhibitions of beaver 
skill. About twenty feet of this canal was fin- 
ished and it was about three feet wide and 
eighteen inches deep. It began in the north- 
east corner of the old pond and was being dug 
across a filled-in grass-grown pond which had 
been washed full of mud and sand. It pointed 
at an aspen grove out in the pines two hundred 
feet away. It was probable that this canal 
would be dug as close as possible to the aspen 
grove, then the canal filled with water from 
