During our wanderings through the woods that summer, Bige and I came upon a family of beavers at Mud Pond. These were doubtless also emigrants from the original Raquette Lake colony. Great improvements were in progress. An abandoned and broken down lumber dam at the outlet, which had not been used for lumber operations for many years, was being rebuilt by the beavers, and the Chief Engineer was on hand assisting and directing operations.
Section of Beaver Dam
On a subsequent visit, we saw the completed dam which raised the waters of the pond about three feet. An area more than a mile long and a quarter mile wide was now flooded. A swamp at the upper end was entirely covered and afforded water transportation from a large grove of poplar trees, which without the dam could not have been reached. Five years later, on the shores of this pond, the beavers had completely cleared of trees more than ten acres of ground. At this time four beaver houses were observed on the shore and on islands in Mud Pond.
When three years old, the children of the Chief Engineer left the parental homestead, mated with relatives in other colonies and set up house building and house keeping on their own account. Some of them, doubtless, located many miles away, others we know built dams and houses on streams emptying into Cherry Pond.
One summer Bige and I were trout fishing on West Bay Brook. We worked up stream about four miles from its mouth, and encountered seven beaver dams and as many houses. At one of these dams we found the white capped Chief working with some younger beavers. Our guess was, that some of these were his own offspring to whom he was giving instruction in engineering practice.
Beaver Posing
A year later, on Fishing Brook, twenty miles to the north-east, and fully fifty miles from the original colony on the Raquette tributary, we found several beaver colonies. They also settled on Minnow Brook. On Salmon River, from its mouth to Salmon Pond (which it drains), a distance of six miles, there is now a beaver dam every half mile. At one of these dams, a few years ago, we found the Chief Engineer at work. The dam was placed where the current was swift, and a big rock in mid stream was utilized as a pier, against which the two sections of the dam were braced. Such an adaptation of available means to accomplish a difficult engineering feat is surely something more than merely instinct.