“You see, a beaver in the winter is as fat as a hog, and the fat lies on the outside; you want the skin, just as you do the rind of pork; so, if you can afford to singe the fur all off, and lose that, he will be just like a scalded hog. I’m in hopes we shall get enough to be able to singe at least one.”
In the course of the day they discovered three other beaver settlements, two of them in ponds made by damming up a brook, and the other in a large natural pond. They also discovered otter-slides and fishing-holes, where the otters fished a great quantity of muskrat, dens and tracks of minks along the river banks and brooks.
“Now,” said Uncle Isaac, “let us look for bears. I’ve seen signs, more or less, for the last two or three miles.”
“What are the signs, Uncle Isaac?” asked Charlie. “I don’t see any.”
Uncle Isaac smiled, and pointed to a clump of oaks and beeches on the side of the brook, the top limbs of which were all bent in, and many of them broken off.
“What do you suppose bent and broke all these limbs?”
“Why, the wind, or the snow, I suppose.”
“But neither the wind or the snow would bend them in; it would bend them down; but these are turned up, and bent in.”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Charlie. “What did?”
“Why, the bears.”