BEAVERS BUILDING A DAM. [[p. 268.]
The females give birth at the end of May, or beginning of June, to from two to six young, which are brought up in the colony and remain there; on the other hand, they never admit a strange beaver, and fight sanguinary battles with it, if it tries to force its way into their settlement. In proportion as the family increases, more houses are built, and I have often seen lodges in which a dozen houses peeped out of the water. The beavers, however, do not fell the trees solely to build their houses, but also to procure food from the tender bark of the thinner branches. They convey these branches in autumn, cut in lengths, to their houses, and pile up a large supply in the lower rooms, on which they live in winter. They go on land at this season, too, and for this purpose keep holes open, in the ice on the banks of their ponds, and I have also found their track in the snow; but as a rule, they remain at home at that season. If the family grow too numerous for the space and the food to be found in the vicinity, several members of it emigrate and establish a new lodge close by: frequently an old beaver colony will contain a hundred. The beaver is one of the most cautious and timid animals in creation, and it is very difficult to get at it on land and kill it with firearms; on the other hand, it is wonderfully easy to capture in traps, and in this way an entire colony can be extirpated to the last one in a very short period.
The male beaver carries in two bladders the castoreum officinale, a very powerfully-scented, oily fluid, which the hunter collects in a bottle and mixes with spirits, partly to keep it from putrefying, but principally to impart to it another odour, by which the beaver is induced to believe that it emanates from a stranger. In this bottle the hunter thrusts a twig, the point of which he moistens with its contents, then thrusts the other end of it into the bank of the beaver pond, so that the point projects over the water at a spot where it is not very deep. Exactly under this twig he places in the water his heavy iron trap, to which he fastens, by a long thong, a very large bush, which he throws on the bank. So soon as a beaver raises its nose on the surface of the pond, it smells the castoreum on the twig, swims up to convince itself whether it emanates from a stranger, and while going on land steps on the trap, which closes and catches its forefeet. It darts away with the trap into deep water, and wrestles furiously with the torturing iron, for which reason a beaver thus captured is never found to have sound teeth—till, quite exhausted, it tries to rise to the surface to breathe. The trap, however, keeps it down, and the prisoner is drowned in its own element. The next morning the hunter sees the bush floating over the spot where the beaver is lying, and pulls it up with the trap. The beaver hunters who visit these western deserts often take some dozens of traps with them, so that when they arrive at a colony, it is speedily destroyed, on which occasion they also capture in the same way the otters living there.
Usually these hunters go quite alone into the desert with a horse that carries the traps, some buffalo hides, salt, gunpowder, and bullets, and lead thus, several hundred of miles away from civilization, a most dangerous and fatiguing life for two or three years. At night they set their traps, and in the morning take out the captured animals, whose skins they dry before the fire, while their flesh serves them as food. When they have cleared out the spot, they pack up the skins, conceal them in caves, under rocks, and in hollow trees, and go farther with their traps. In winter, when the hunt is not very productive, they build huts of skins, or seek a cave in the rocks, in which they find a shelter from the harsh climate, and hunt other varieties of game, while they keep their horse alive on a stock of dried grass, collected in autumn, weeds, or poplar bark. At the end of some years, during which such a hunter has collected a large stock of skins, he proceeds to the nearest settlement, fetches pack animals thence, takes a sufficient number of men into his service, and proceeds to his hunting-grounds, in order to carry to market the produce of his lengthened labour. It is often the case that such a hunter receives from three to four thousand pounds for the skins collected during this period, but still more frequently he pays for his daring with his scalp and his life. The Indians themselves do not kill beavers, but regard the trappers as the pioneers of the white men, who eventually advance farther into their hunting-grounds, and take from them one piece of land after the other, by which they are daily driven farther back, and come into hostile collision with one another. Hence the trappers are hated by all the Indians, and pursued by them whenever they are seen. Only the great concealment and difficult approach to the regions where they hunt, and the great caution with which they manage to hide their abode from the eyes of the Indians, render it possible for them to lead this life for years, and constantly deceive the savages, when they accidentally acquire a knowledge of their presence. It is incredible what acuteness and skill such iron characters develope, and we must feel surprised that a single one of these adventurers ever sees his home again, I have lain for whole nights at the little fires of these people, and listened to their stories—how they became familiar with this life in their earliest youth, and returned to it when grey-haired, although able to live comfortably on their savings in the civilized world. As the seafarer dies on the water, the desert becomes the element of this hunter; and he rarely closes his eyes elsewhere—with the rifle on his arm.
The sign of beaver lodges which we saw was so fresh and numerous that probably no one had as yet appeared here with traps: the stream spread far over its bank and formed a very large pool, from whose surface a number of houses peeped out; but we could see nothing of the mysterious denizens of the settlement. We were compelled to ride close under the precipice on our right, where our cattle were up to their knees in water, in order to cross the inundation, while below the dams the stream remained in its narrow bed.
We reached Canadian River, which, however, here trended so to the east that we took the first opportunity of crossing the hills that bordered it and pursuing our course toward the north. On the other side of them, which we reached about noon, we came to another small stream, on whose banks we saw a number of peeled trees, and also found here a beaver lodge. We rode through the stream, and had left it about a mile behind us, when we suddenly heard a shout in our rear, and saw a man, who had stationed himself on an isolated rock, and was making signs to us. Tiger told me he was a beaver trapper. We rode back to bid this son of the desert good day and hear whether we could be of any service to him. When we drew nearer, the tall dark form disappeared from the rocks, and a man stepped from the thicket on our left, with a long rifle in his hand, and came up to us with the question—"Where from, strangers?" He was above six feet high, thin, but muscular, with extraordinarily broad shoulders, a dark bronzed face and neck, a long grey beard, and a haughty demeanour; his small, light-blue eyes flashed with great resolution under his thick black brows, while a pleasant smile softened the impression which his glance might have produced on a stranger. His exterior revealed at the first glance that he had endured a good deal in his time, that he had often defied fate, and that nothing could easily happen to him which would throw him out of gear and make his resolution totter. Deer-hide tight trowsers, shoes of the same material, and a jacket of the same composed his dress, and a scarlet woollen shirt, unbuttoned, allowed his bronzed chest to be seen. A beaver-skin cap proved that it was made by the wearer, and the same was the case with the hunting-bag he carried over his shoulder.
I rode up to the stranger and replied—"From the Leone on the Rio Grande," and offered him my hand, which he shook heartily. "Are you a trapper? and where from?" I asked him. "From Missouri; my name—Ben Armstrong—has been known for the last forty years in the Rocky Mountains, and I have now been back for a year from the old State." He invited us to go to his camp and spend the night with him, as he longed to hear something about events in the old States. We accepted his invitation, and followed him along a narrow path through the bushes and rocks to a spot some hundred yards above the pond, where we dismounted in front of some thick scrub, and passed through it with our host. We stepped on to a cleared spot, from which the axe had removed the bushes, at whose northern end heavy masses of rock rose above each other, and hanging over at a height of thirty feet, covered a large space. Over the whole place a number of dried beaver skins was suspended from the branches, as well as the hide of a grizzly, and many others of deer and antelopes. Under the rocks lay several bundles of beaver skins, while one of them drawn up near the fire seemed to have served our host as a seat.
Antonio and Königstein went down to the pond with our horses, where there was excellent grass, and watched over them in turn with my other comrades. I saw a track of a horse leading to our host's abode, and asked him whose it was, to which he replied that on this trip, for the first time in his life, he had taken a partner, a young Kentuckian of the name of Gray, who was at present out hunting on horseback, to get some venison, as they were sick of beaver meat. The next day, he said, they intended to leave their camp, as they had trapped all the beavers round, otherwise he would not have been so incautious as to lead so many horses to his hiding-place and thus betray it to passing Indians. He always led his own horse through the scrub up the stream, and let it graze on the opposite side, so that its track might not lead to his camp.
Our host now filled a cup from a small cask of whisky three of which lay under the rocks, and, as he told us, constituted his sole luxury. He loaded an extra mule with them when he started, but it had been killed some months previously by a couguar, as it had got loose at night. He readily offered us his favourite liquid and a cup of fresh spring water, and after taking a hearty pull himself he put six beaver tails in front of the fire, and we put all our coffeepots with them, and unpacked our small stock of biscuit, while we set the remaining marrow-bones from yesterday to roast.
The sun had not set when our friendly host's partner arrived with his horse, loaded with deer meat. He was greatly surprised at finding so large a party, and very pleased to have an opportunity of hearing news from the States, even though it was not of the freshest. He was young and tall, with a healthy, merry face, brown eyes, pleasant mouth, a commencing beard, and long, dark brown curls hanging over his shoulders. His tight-fitting leathern dress was made with more coquettishness than Armstrong's, and displayed his handsome person, while a broad-brimmed black beaver hat slightly pulled over one ear, imparted to his whole appearance something resolute and determined.