THE LIFE OF A BEAVER COLONY - 1381 
pond that had been the scene of such activities 
during the past five years. Under the leadership 
of the old beaver they trekked across country to 
the new land of promise. It was not a conspicuous 
band of immigrants that undertook the big journey, 
for they did not march all together, but in a long, 
straggling line, following each other by the invisible 
trail of scent as surely and easily as man follows his 
well-built roads. Travelling on land shows a 
beaver at his worst ; he is slow, and even clumsy, 
and is at the mercy of any passing enemy. It is 
therefore with a feeling of dread that they venture 
far from water, so well do they realise their own 
shortcomings. Of the twenty-five that started 
out, only eighteen reached their destination. And 
it was only by good fortune that the death list had 
not been far greater. A pair of wolves out hunting 
for their cubs’ dinner came across the beavers’ 
trail. ‘They needed no urging, for they knew that 
it was the trail of the most easily killed of all 
the animals in the woods. So they followed at a 
swinging trot, careful only to see that they did not 
overrun their quarry. Less than an hour later, the 
rising moon lightened up the tragedy, the details 
of which are quite unnecessary. Sufficient is it to 
say that seven beavers ceased to be, and had it not 
been for a small pond into which the others escaped, 
it is likely that the new colony would never have 
been founded. The wolves would have killed the 
entire band without the slightest difficulty. As it 
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