Part 3

The city in which the tail first made its appearance was a very ancient one, and may have been the oldest town on the North American continent. Nobody knows when the first stick was laid in the dam that changed a small natural pond into a large artificial one, and thus opened the way for further municipal improvements; but it was probably centuries ago, and for all we can tell it may have been thousands of years back in the past. Generation after generation of beavers had worked on that dam, building it a little higher and a little higher, a little longer and a little longer, year after year; and raising their lodges as the pond rose around them. Theirs was a maritime city, for most of its streets were of water, like those of Venice; rich cargoes of food-stuffs came floating to its very doors, and they themselves were navigators from their earliest youth, and took to the water as naturally as ducks or Englishmen. They were lumbermen, too, and when the timber was all cut from along the shores of the pond they dug canals across the low, level, marshy ground, back to the higher land where the birch and the poplar still grew, and floated the branches and the smaller logs down the artificial water-ways. And there were land roads, as well as canals, for here and there narrow trails crossed the swamp, showing where generations of busy workers had passed back and forth between the felled tree and the water's edge. Streets, canals, public works, dwellings, commerce, lumbering, rich stores laid up for the winter--what more do you want to constitute a city, even if the houses are few in number, and the population somewhat smaller than that of London or New York?

There was a time, not very long before the Beaver was born, when for a few years the city was deserted. The trappers had swept through the country, and the citizens' skulls had been hung up on the bushes, while their skins went to the great London fur market. Few were left alive, and those few were driven from their homes and scattered through the woods. The trappers decided that the ground was worked out, and most of them pushed on to the north and west in search of regions not yet depopulated. Then, one by one, the beavers came back to their old haunts. The broken dam was repaired; new lodges were built, and new beavers born in them; and again the ancient town was alive with the play of the babies and the labors of the civil engineers. Not as populous, perhaps, as it had once been, but alive, and busy, and happy. And so it was when our Beaver came into the world.

The first year of his life was an easy one, especially the winter, when there was little for anyone to do except to eat, to sleep, and now and then to fish for the roots of the yellow water-lily in the soft mud at the bottom of the pond. During that season he probably accomplished more than his parents did, for if he could not toil he could at least grow. Of course they may have been growing, too, but it was less noticeable in them than in him. Not only was he increasing in size and weight, but he was storing up strength and strenuousness for the work that lay before him. It would take much muscle to force those long yellow teeth of his through the hard, tough flesh of the maple or the birch or the poplar. It would take vigor and push and enterprise to roll the heavy billets of wood over the grass-tufts to the edge of the water. And, most of all, it would take strength and nerve and determination to tear himself away from a steel trap and leave a foot behind. So it was well for the youngster that for a time he had nothing to do but grow.

Spring came at last, and many of the male beavers prepared to leave home for a while. The ladies seemed to prefer not to be bothered by the presence of men-folk during the earliest infancy of the children; so the men, probably nothing loath, took advantage of the opportunity to see something of the world, wandering by night up and down the streams, and hiding by day in burrows under the banks. For a time they enjoyed it, but as the summer dragged by they came straggling home one after another. The new babies who had arrived in their absence had passed the most troublesome age, and it was time to begin work again. The dam and the lodges needed repairs, and there was much food to be gathered and laid up for the coming winter.

Now, on a dark autumn night, behold the young Beaver toiling with might and main. His parents have felled a tree, and it is his business to help them cut up the best portions and carry them home. He gnaws off a small branch, seizes the butt end between his teeth, swings it over his shoulder, and makes for the water, keeping his head twisted around to the right or left so that the end of the branch may trail on the ground behind him. Sometimes he even rises on his hind legs, and walks almost upright, with his broad, strong tail for a prop to keep him from tipping over backward if his load happens to catch on something. Arrived at the canal or at the edge of the pond, he jumps in and swims for town, still carrying the branch over his shoulder, and finally leaves it on the growing pile in front of his father's lodge. Or perhaps the stick is too large and too heavy to be carried in such a way. In that case it must be cut into short billets and rolled, as a cant-hook man rolls a log down a skidway. Only the Beaver has no cant-hook to help him, and no skidway, either. All he can do is to push with all his might, and there are so many, many grass-tufts and little hillocks in the way! And sometimes the billet rolls down into a hollow, and then it is very hard to get it out again. He works like a beaver, and pushes and shoves and toils with tremendous energy, but I am afraid that more than one choice stick never reaches the water.

These were his first tasks. Later on he learned to fell trees himself. Standing up on his hind legs and tail, with his hands braced against the trunk, he would hold his head sidewise, open his mouth wide, set his teeth against the bark, and bring his jaws together with a savage nip that left a deep gash in the side of the tree. A second nip deepened the gash, and gave it more of a downward slant, and two or three more carried it still farther into the tough wood. Then he would choose a new spot a little farther down, and start a second gash, which was made to slant up toward the first. And when he thought that they were both deep enough he would set his teeth firmly in the wood between them, and pull and jerk and twist at it until he had wrenched out a chip--a chip perhaps two inches long, and from an eighth to a quarter of an inch thick. He would make bigger ones when he grew to be bigger himself, but you mustn't expect too much at first. Chip after chip was torn out in this way, and gradually he would work around the tree until he had completely encircled it. Then the groove was made deeper, and after a while it would have to be broadened so that he could get his head farther into it. He seemed to think it was of immense importance to get the job done as quickly as possible, for he worked away with tremendous energy and eagerness, as if felling that tree was the only thing in the world that was worth doing. Once in a while he would pause for a moment to feel of it with his hands, and to glance up at the top to see whether it was getting ready to fall, and several times he stopped long enough to take a refreshing dip in the pond; but he always hurried back, and pitched in again harder than ever. In fact, he sometimes went at it so impetuously that he slipped and rolled over on his back. Little by little he dug away the tree's flesh until there was nothing left but its heart, and at last it began to crack and rend. The Beaver jumped aside to get out of the way, and hundreds and hundreds of small, tender branches, and delicious little twigs and buds came crashing down where he could cut them off and eat them or carry them away at his leisure.

And so the citizens labored, and their labor brought its rich reward, and everybody was busy and contented, and life was decidedly worth living.

But one black November night our hero's father, the wisest old beaver in all the town, went out to his work and never came home again. A trapper had found the rebuilt city--a scientific trapper who had studied his profession for years, and who knew just how to go to work. He kept away from the lodges as long as he could, so as not to frighten anyone; and before he set a single trap he looked the ground over very carefully, located the different trails that ran back from the water's edge toward the timber, visited the stumps of the felled trees, and paid particular attention to the tooth-marks on the chips. No two beavers leave marks that are exactly alike. The teeth of one are flatter or rounder than those of another, while a third has large or small nicks in the edges of his yellow chisels; and each tooth leaves its own peculiar signature behind it. By noting all these things the trapper concluded that a particular runway in the wet, grassy margin of the pond was the one by which a certain old beaver always left the water in going to his night's labor. That beaver, he decided, would best be the first one taken, for he was probably the head of a family, and an elderly person of much wisdom and experience; and if one of his children should be caught first he might become alarmed, and take the lead in a general exodus.

So the trapper set a heavy double-spring trap in the edge of the water at the foot of the runway, and covered it with a thin sheet of moss. And that night, as the old beaver came swimming up to the shore, he put his foot down where he shouldn't, and two steel jaws flew up and clasped him around the thigh. He had felt that grip before. Was not half of his right hand gone, and three toes from his left hind foot? But this was a far more serious matter than either of those adventures. It was not a hand that was caught this time, nor yet a toe, or toes. It was his right hind leg, well up toward his body, and the strongest beaver that ever lived could not have pulled himself free. Now when a beaver is frightened, he of course makes for deep water. There, he thinks, no enemy can follow him; and, what is more, it is the highway to his lodge, and to the burrow that he has hollowed in the bank for a refuge in case his house should be attacked. So this beaver turned and jumped back into the water the way he had come; but, alas! he took his enemy with him. The heavy trap dragged him to the bottom like a stone, and the short chain fastened to a stake kept him from going very far toward home. For a few minutes he struggled with all his might, and the soft black mud rose about him in inky clouds. Then he quieted down and lay very, very still; and the next day the trapper came along and pulled him out by the chain.

Something else happened the same night. Another wise old beaver, the head man of another lodge, was killed by a falling tree. He ought to have known better than to let such a thing happen. I really don't see how he could have been so careless. But the best of us will make mistakes at times, and any pitcher may go once too often to the well. I suppose that he had felled hundreds of trees and bushes, big and little, in the course of his life, and he had never yet met with an accident; but this time he thought he would take one more bite after the tree had really begun to fall. So he thrust his head again into the narrowing notch, and the wooden jaws closed upon him with a nip that was worse than his own. He tried to draw back, but it was too late, his skull crashed in, and his life went out like a candle.

And so, in a few hours, the city lost two of its best citizens--the very two whom it could least afford to lose. If they had been spared they might, perhaps, have known enough to scent the coming danger, and to lead their families and neighbors away from the doomed town, deeper into the heart of the wilderness. As it was, the trapper had things all his own way, and by working carefully and cautiously he added skin after skin to his store of beaver-pelts. I haven't time to tell you of all the different ways in which he set his traps, nor can we stop to talk of the various baits that he used, from castoreum to fresh sticks of birch or willow, or of those other traps, still more artfully arranged, which had no bait at all, but were cunningly hidden where the poor beavers would be almost certain to step into them before they saw them. After all, it was his awful success that mattered, rather than the way in which he achieved it. Our friend's mother was one of the next to go, and the way his brothers and sisters disappeared one after another was a thing to break one's heart.

One night the Beaver himself came swimming down the pond, homeward bound, and as he dived and approached the submarine entrance of the lodge he noticed some stakes driven into the mud--stakes that had never been there before. They seemed to form two rows, one on each side of his course, but as there was room enough for him to pass between them he swam straight ahead without stopping. His hands had no webs between the fingers, and were of little use in swimming, so he had folded them back against his body; but his big feet were working like the wheels of a twin-screw steamer, and he was forging along at a great rate. Suddenly, half-way down the lines of stakes, his breast touched the pan of a steel trap, and the jaws flew up quick as a wink and strong as a vise. Fortunately there was nothing that they could take hold of. They struck him so hard that they lifted him bodily upward, but they caught only a few hairs.

Even a scientific trapper may sometimes make mistakes, and when this one came around to visit his trap, and found it sprung but empty, he thought that the beavers must have learned its secret and sprung it on purpose. There was no use, he decided, in trying to catch such intelligent animals in their own doorway, and he took the trap up and set it in a more out-of-the-way place. And so one source of danger was removed, just because the Beaver was lucky enough to touch the pan with his breast instead of with a foot.

A week later he was really caught by his right hand, and met with one of the most thrilling adventures of his life. Oh, but that was a glorious night! Dark as a pocket, no wind, thick black clouds overhead, and the rain coming down in a steady, steady drizzles--just the kind of a night that the beavers love, when the friendly darkness shuts their little city in from all the rest of the world, and when they feel safe and secure. Then, how the long yellow teeth gouge and tear at the tough wood, how the trees come tumbling down, and how the branches and the little logs come hurrying in to augment the winter food-piles! Often of late the Beaver had noticed an unpleasant odor along the shores, an odor that frightened him and made him very uneasy, but to-night the rain had washed it all away, and the woods smelled as sweet and clean as if God had just made them over new. And on this night, of all others, the Beaver put his hand squarely into a steel trap.

He was in a shallow portion of the pond, and the chain was too short for him to reach water deep enough to drown him; but now a new danger appeared, for there on the low, mossy bank was an otter, glaring at him through the darkness. Beaver-meat makes a very acceptable meal for an otter, and the Beaver knew it. And he knew, also, how utterly helpless he was, either to fly or to resist, with that heavy trap on his arm, and its chain binding him to the stake. His heart sank like lead, and he trembled from his nose to the end of his tail, and whimpered and cried like a baby. But, strange to say, it was the trapper who saved him, though, of course, it was done quite unintentionally. As the otter advanced to the attack there came a sudden sharp click, and in another second he too was struggling for dear life. Two traps had been set in the shallow water. The Beaver had found one, and the otter the other.

The full story of that night, with all its details of fear and suffering and pain, will never be written; and probably it is as well that it should not be. But I can give you a few of the facts, if you care to hear them. The Beaver soon found that he was out of the otter's reach, and with his fears relieved on that point he set to work to free himself from the trap. Round and round he twisted, till there came a little snap, and the bone of his arm broke short off in the steel jaws. Then for a long, long time he pulled and pulled with all his might, and at last the tough skin was rent apart, and the muscles and sinews were torn out by the roots. His right hand was gone, and he was so weak and faint that it seemed as if all the strength and life of his whole body had gone with it. No matter. He was free, and he swam away to the nearest burrow and lay down to rest. The otter tried to do the same, but he was caught by the thick of his thigh, and his case was a hopeless one. Next day the trapper found him alive, but very meek and quiet, worn out with fear and useless struggles. In the other trap were a beaver's hand and some long shreds of flesh and sinew that must once have reached well up into the shoulder.

We shall have to hurry over the events of the next winter--the last winter in the city's history. By the time the Beaver's wound was healed--Nature was good to him, and the skin soon grew over the torn stump--the pond was covered with ice. The beavers, only half as numerous as they had been a few weeks before, kept close in their lodges and burrows, and for a time they lived in peace and quiet, and their numbers suffered no further diminution. Then the trapper took to setting his traps through the ice, and before long matters were worse than ever. By spring the few beavers that remained were so thoroughly frightened that the ancient town was again abandoned--this time forever. The lodges fell to ruins, the burrows caved in, the dam gave way, the pond and canals were drained, and that was the end of the city.

Yet not quite the end, after all. The beavers have vanished from their old habitation, but their work remains in the broad meadows cleared of timber by their teeth, and covered with rich black soil by the inundations from their dam. There is an Indian legend which says that after the Creator separated the land from the water He employed gigantic beavers to smooth it down and prepare it for the abode of men. However that may be, the farmers of generations to come will have reason to rise up and bless those busy little citizens--but I don't suppose they will ever do it.

One city was gone, but there were two that could claim the honor of being our Beaver's home at different periods of his life. The first, as we have already seen, was ancient and historic. The second was brand-new. Let us see how it had its beginning. The Beaver got married about the time he left his old home; and this, by the way, is a very good thing to do when you want to start a new town. Except for his missing hand, his wife was so like him that it would have puzzled you to tell which was which. I think it is very likely that she was his twin sister, but of course that's none of our business. Do you want to know what they looked like? They measured about three feet six inches from tip of nose to tip of tail, and they weighed perhaps thirty pounds apiece. Their bodies were heavy and clumsy, and were covered with thick, soft, grayish under-fur, which in turn was overlaid with longer hairs of a glistening chestnut-brown, making a coat that was thoroughly water-proof as well as very beautiful. Their heads were somewhat like those of gigantic rats, with small, light-brown eyes, little round ears covered with hair, and long orange-colored incisors looking out from between parted lips. One portrait will answer for both of them.

They wandered about for some time, looking for a suitable location, and examining several spots along the beds of various little rivers, none of which seemed to be just right. But at last they found, in the very heart of the wilderness, a place where a shallow stream ran over a hard stony bottom, and here they set to work. It was a very desirable situation in every respect. At one side stood a large tree, so close that it could probably be used as a buttress for the dam when the latter was sufficiently lengthened to reach it; while above the shallow the ground was low and flat on both sides for some distance back from the banks, so that the pond would have plenty of room to spread out. If they could have spoken they would probably have said that the place was a dam site better than any other they had seen.

Alder bushes laid lengthwise of the current were the first materials used, and for a time the water filtered through them with hardly a pause. Then the beavers began laying mud and stones and moss on this brush foundation, scooping them up with their hands, and holding them under their chins as they waddled or swam to the dam. The Beaver himself was not very good at this sort of work, for his right hand was gone, as we know, and it was not easy for him to carry things; but he did the best he could, and together they accomplished a great deal. The mud and the grass and such-like materials were deposited mainly on the upper face of the dam, where the pressure of the water only sufficed to drive them tighter in among the brush; and thus, little by little, a smooth bank of earth was presented to the current, backed up on the lower side by a tangle of sticks and poles. Its top was very level and straight, and along its whole length the water trickled over in a succession of tiny rills. This was important, for if all the overflow had been in one place the stream might have been so strong and rapid as to eat into the dam, and perhaps carry away the whole structure.

The first year the beavers did not try to raise the stream more than a foot above its original level. There was much other work to be done--a house to be built, and food to be laid in for the winter--and if they spent too much time on the dam they might freeze or starve before spring. A few rods up-stream was a grassy point which the rising waters had transformed into an island, and here they built their lodge, a hollow mound of sticks and mud, with a small, cave-like chamber in the centre, from which two tunnels led out under the pond--"angles," the trappers call them. The walls were masses of earth and wood and stones, so thick and solid that even a man with an axe would have found it difficult to penetrate them. Only at the very apex of the mound there was no mud, nothing but tangled sticks through which a breath of fresh air found its way now and then. In spite of this feeble attempt at ventilation I am obliged to admit that the atmosphere of the lodge was often a good deal like that of the Black Hole of Calcutta, but beavers are so constituted that they do not need much oxygen, and they did not seem to mind it. In all other respects the house was neat and clean. The floor was only two or three inches above the level of the water in the angles, and would naturally have been a bed of mud; but they mixed little twigs with it, and stamped and pounded it down till it was hard and smooth. I think likely the Beaver's tail had something to do with this part of the work, as well as with finishing off the dam, for he was fond of slapping things with it, and it was just the right shape for such use. In fact, I fear that if it had not been for the tail, and for other tails like it, neither of the cities would ever have been as complete as they were. With the ends of projecting sticks cut off to leave the walls even and regular, and with long grass carried in to make the beds, the lodge was finished and ready.

And now you might have seen the beavers coming home to rest after a night's labor at felling timber--swimming across the pond toward the island, with only the tops of their two little heads showing above the water. In front of the lodge each tail-rudder gives a slap and a twist, and they dive for the submarine door of one of the angles. In another second they are swimming along the dark, narrow tunnel, making the water surge around them. Suddenly the roof of the passage rises, and their heads pop up into the air. A yard or two farther, and they enter the chamber of the lodge, with its level floor and its low, arched roof. And there in the darkness they lie down on their grass beds and go to sleep. It is good to have a home of your own where you may take your ease when the night's work is done.

Near the upper end of the pond, where the bank was higher, they dug a long burrow, running back ten or fifteen feet into the ground. This was to be the last resort if, by any possibility, the lodge should ever be invaded. It was a weary task, digging that burrow, for its mouth was deep under the water, and every few minutes they had to stop work and come to the surface for breath. Night after night they scooped and shovelled, rushing the job as fast as they knew how, but making pretty slow progress in spite of all their efforts. It was done at last, however, and they felt easier in their minds when they knew that it was ready for use in case of necessity. From its mouth in the depths of the pond it sloped gradually upward to a dry chamber under the roots of a large birch; and here, where a few tiny holes were not likely to be noticed from the outside, two or three small openings, almost hidden by the moss and dead leaves, let in the air and an occasional ray of light. The big tree made a solid roof overhead, and the chamber was large enough, with a little crowding, to accommodate a whole family of beavers.

There was only one other heavy task, and that was the gathering of the wood, which, with its bark, was to serve as food through the winter. This too was finally finished, and the very last things that the beavers did that fall were to put another coat of mud on the outside of the lodge, and to see that the dam was in the best possible condition. No repairing could be done after the ice made; and if the dam should give way at any time during the winter, the pond would be drained, and the entrances of the lodge and the burrow would be thrown open to any prowling marauders that might happen to pass that way. So it was imperative to have things in good order before cold weather came on.

There came a quiet, windless day, when the sky was gray, and when the big snow-flakes came floating lazily down, some to lose themselves in the black water, and some to robe the woods and the shores in white. At nightfall the clouds broke up, the stars shone forth, and the air grew odder and keener till long crystal spears shot out across the pond, and before morning a sheet of glass had spread from shore to shore. I do not think it was unwelcome. The beavers were shut in for the winter, or could only go abroad with considerable difficulty, but they had each other, and there was a little world of their own down under the ice and snow. The chamber of the lodge was home, and just outside was their food storehouse--the big pile of wood which it had cost so much labor to gather. One of the entrances was shorter and straighter than the other, and through this they used to bring in sticks from the heap, and lay them on the floor between the beds, where they could devour the bark at their leisure. If they grew restless, and wanted to go farther afield, there was the bottom of the pond to be explored, and the big luscious lily-roots to be dug up for a change of diet. It was a peaceful time, a time of rest from the labors of the past year, and of growing fat and strong for those of the year to come. We have much goods laid up for many months; let us eat, drink, and be merry, and hope that the trappers will not come to-morrow.

The babies came in May, and I suppose that the young father and mother were almost as proud and happy as some of you who are in similar circumstances. The Beaver did not wander very far from home that spring and summer, nor was he away very long at a time.

There were five of the children, and they were very pretty--about as large as rats, and covered with thick, soft, silky, reddish-brown fur, but without any of the longer, coarser, chestnut-colored hairs that formed their parents' outer coats. They were very playful, too, as the father and mother had been in their own youthful days. For a while they had to be nursed, like other babies; but by and by the old beavers began to bring in little twigs for them, about the size of lead-pencils; and if you had been there, and your eyes had been sharp enough to pierce the gloom, you might have seen the youngsters exercising their brand new teeth, and learning to sit up and hold sticks in their baby hands while they ate the bark. And wouldn't you have liked to be present on the night when they first went swimming down the long, dark tunnel; and, rising to the surface, looked around on their world of woods and water--on the quiet pond, with its glassy smoothness broken only by their own ripples; on the tall trees, lifting their fingers toward the sky; and on the stars, marching silently across the heavens, and looking down with still, unwinking eyes on another family of babies that had come to live and love and be happy for a little while on God's earth?