130 WATCHED BY WILD ANIMALS 
These settlers had come from about ten 
miles down stream. During summer vaca- 
tions beavers make long rambling journeys. It 
may be that some of these beavers had visited 
this old colony and knew of its opportunities 
before coming to settle. 
From time to time during evenings I had 
glimpses of several of the beaver settlers. From 
their appearance and from their footprints they 
were mostly young beavers. During the autumn 
I several times dimly saw them playing in the 
twilight. They splashed merrily about in the 
pond, the entire colony taking part. 
With mud and willows the beavers repaired 
the breaks in the but-little-damaged dam of the 
old pond. Then they cut a ditch thirty or 
forty feet long through a ridge to a little pond 
to the north, and filled the old large pond. Its 
waters extended to within twelve or fifteen feet 
of the lower end of the canal. But as the canal 
was nearly two feet higher than the surface of 
this pond, water for the canal would have to 
come from a higher source, and I was puzzled 
as to where this might be. But beavers plan 
their work two or three moves ahead, and they 
probably knew what they were about. 
Commonly a house is built in the pond or on 
the edge of it. But on a little space of raised 
ground, within ten feet of the lower end of the 
