Another of the peculiarities of the beaver is the great sharpness of its teeth, remaining for many years as sharp as the best edged tool. The mechanic with the finest steel can not make a tool that will not in a short time become so blunt and so dulled as to require renewed sharpening, and this, with the beaver, would have to be repeated hundreds of times in order to do service with it during the whole of its lifetime, which is from ten to fifteen years if it is permitted to live the allotted years of a beaver.
In one of my trips on a steamer of the Upper Missouri, one day while the boat's crew were getting their supply of wood, I took my gun and started along the river-bank in the hope of seeing an elk or deer that I might shoot. I came to a place on the river where the banks were very high, and I observed that a lot of cottonwood saplings from six to eight inches in diameter had been felled and cut into sections. I saw that it had been recently done, and I at first supposed that it had been done by some one with an ax, but when I reached the spot, I saw that it was the work of the beavers and that some of the wood had been dragged away. I followed the trail for a few steps, when I came to the mouth of a tunnel, and discovered that the timber had been dragged through it. The tunnel had an incline of about thirty-five degrees, and was as straight as if it had been made with an auger. This was in the month of October, at the time when it was their custom to stow away their food for the winter. They had no dam at this point, as the water was deep, and they were drawing the timbers down through the tunnel and sinking them in the deep water, so that they could have access to it during the period when the river would be frozen over. The reason for the tunnel, of which I have spoken, was that the river-bank for some distance was high and almost perpendicular, and the beaver, being a very clumsy animal with short legs, his only alternative was to make a tunnel in order to get his winter food. They have a way of sinking the cottonwood and keeping it down in their pond or simply in the deep water when they do not make dams. This family of beavers evidently had their house far under the surface of the ground, for the place was admirably adapted for them to make such a home, the banks being so high above the water. One could see no trace whatever of the beaver, or have a knowledge of where he was, more than the opening of the tunnel and where the timber had been cut; indeed, one might pass hundreds of times and not be conscious that beavers were living right under one's feet. I picked up one of the chips which the beaver had cut, measuring about seven inches in length, and carried it home with me as a curiosity.
CHAPTER XXVI.
A BOY'S TRIP OVERLAND.
Remembering my own love of adventure as a boy, I can not refrain from giving here a chapter contributed by my son, Green Majors, which will be found both instructive and interesting. He says: "At the inexperienced age of twelve years I was seized with a strong desire to go overland to Montana. For a number of years I had lived at Nebraska City, on the Missouri River, a starting point in those days for west-bound freight and emigrant wagon trains; and having so long seen the stage-coaches go bounding over the hills and rolling prairies, headed for the golden West, it was with a feeling of great satisfaction that on the morning of April 26, 1866, I was seated on top of one of those same coaches, as a fellow passenger with my father, Alexander Majors, bound for the Rocky Mountains, and Helena, Mont., in particular. To my boyish fancy the never-ceasing rocking to and fro of the overland coach of early days was a constant delight. Denver we reached in six days and nights of incessant travel. Rain nor shine, floods nor deserts, stopped us. If a passenger became too sleepy or exhausted to hold on and sleep at the same time on the outside, he could get inside by submitting to the 'sardining' process. But inside, the clouds of dust and the cramped position necessary to assume made one at times feel like the coach were spinning round like a top in the dark. At Denver we laid in a big supply of luncheon material, for the next continuous ride, without a town, was for 600 miles, to Salt Lake City. However, before we reached Zion, our troubles were many, one of which was being caught in a violent snow-storm one dark night while bowling along over Laramie Plains. Our driver and his mules both lost the road. He so notified us, and we got out to wade through the innumerable drifts to see if we could feel the hard-beaten trail with our feet. But it was of no use. So for fear we might wander away from the emigrant road too far, or that he might drive over some precipice or into some hole or other in the blinding storm, we unhitched his four mules and tied each one with its head to a wheel, so there could be no runaway, and then all hands got back into the coach, tucked our wraps about us as best we could, and there we sat, like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief, with the wind whistling in all its many sad cadences through the flapping wings of that desolate coach, until the longest night I ever saw went by. Next morning we found two and a half feet of 'the beautiful' on the level, and the struggle to gain another station began. We tramped snow and broke trails for that coach to get through the drifts for about ten or fifteen miles, before we got to a lower altitude, out of the path of the storm, for all of which distance we of course paid the stage company 25 cents a mile fare, with no baggage allowance to speak of.
"Not a great ways farther on, we struck the famous Bitter Creek country, a section that was the terror of travelers, because of poor grass, water that was foul and bitter, and alkali plains that were terrific on man and beast. At one place along Bitter Creek its water was as red as blood, at another as yellow as an orange; but generally its color was a dark muddy drab, and highly impregnated with vegetable and earthy matter. I suppose Bitter Creek is the only place on earth where highwaymen had the cold-blooded nerve to charge travelers $1.50 for nothing but fat bacon, poorly cooked, and an inferior quality of mustard, as a meal's victuals, but the stage station-keepers had it there. By the time we finished our Bitter Creek experience we were proof against peril, so that subsequent floods in the cañons from melting snows in the mountains, sitting bolt upright with three on a seat to sleep over the rough mountain roads at night, and passing over long stretches of country with no water fit to drink, were trivial circumstances.
"After a thirty-day siege of this sort of experience, we alighted on the gravelly streets of Helena, Mont., then a town of canvas houses and tents, and log huts. Helena at that time was the liveliest town I have ever seen in my life, either in America or Europe, over the whole of both of which I have since traveled. At that time her business houses were largely propped up on stilts, while underneath the red-shirted placer miner was washing the blue gravel soil for gold-dust. Her streets, in many places, were bridged over, to allow of the same thing. Sunday was the liveliest day in the week for business. The plainest meal at a restaurant cost $1.50, and bakery pies, with brown paper used for a crust, cost 75 cents each. Everybody had money, and nobody appeared to want to keep what he had. Gold-dust was the money of the country, no greenbacks nor coin being used. A pennyweight of the yellow dust passed for a dollar, but expert cashiers, at the gaming places and stores, were said to know how to weigh the article so deftly that $100 of it in value would only go $50 in distance. However, wages were very high, and so was everything else, so that if a man were robbed pretty badly, he could soon recuperate his lost fortunes. There were no churches in Helena then, if, indeed, there were any in the Territory. The first Sunday after arriving there, I remember attending divine service in a muslin building, but the blacksmith's hammer next door and the lusty auctioneer's voice in the street made so much noise the congregation could not understand the divine's injunctions, so that church-going there, at that time, was attended with considerable annoyance. Everything was crude and primitive, everybody was cordial, generous, and open-hearted, and anything or anybody justly appealing to those roughly appareled yeomanry for aid or sympathy invariably opened the floodgates of their plenty and fired the great, deep, warm heart-throbs of their noble natures.