Sir John Richardson states that their main food consists of a large root, something like a cabbage stalk, which grows at the bottom of lakes and rivers, a yellow water-lily in fact—Nuphar luteum. But they eat also the bark of trees—that of the poplar, birch and willow. The latter, however, they cannot procure in winter, when the ice prevents their getting to land, so that roots are then their staple food. In summer the diet is varied by the different kinds of herbage and the berries growing near their haunts. In the part of Colorado I have already referred to, above what is called Hardscrabble Creek, in Fremont County, wild fruits, gooseberries, currants, raspberries, and other berries are in profusion. When the ice breaks up in the spring, the beavers always leave their homes to roam about until the approaching fall of the leaf makes them return; and after laying in their winter stock of wood, they then set to work to repair their homes.
The Indians consider beaver flesh a delicacy, and they prefer to bake it with the skin on, as our gipsies roast the hedgehog. It is a heavy meat, much like pork, hard to digest.
The author already mentioned tamed several of them, and he got them to answer to their names and to follow him about like dogs. They were, he said, very fond of being petted and fondled, creeping into the laps of the Indian women and standing on their hind legs to be caressed. They lived indoors with the women and children during the winter, and if these were absent for any length of time, the beavers quite fretted after them. So domesticated did they become that they particularly enjoyed rice and plum pudding, and, indeed, shared generally the food of the women. The cry of a beaver cub is very like that of an infant.
The American poet, Whittier, says—
"The musk-rat plied its mason's trade,
And tier by tier its mud walls laid."
The musk-rat is a small kind of beaver, and great numbers of the skins are imported into England. It constructs huts like its larger relative but of a simpler style, the openings to them being under the water. There is also an animal nearly as large as a common beaver which was included in the same family, and called a coypu, inhabiting the rivers and streams of South America. Furs of coypu are sold as otter skins.
"Ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee," and from the beaver and its works we can indeed learn what persistent, cheerful industry can accomplish. Our poet, Coleridge, said, "If the idle are described as killing time, the methodical man may be justly said to call it into life and moral being, while he makes it the distinct object not only of the consciousness, but of the conscience." Perhaps the latter part of this sentence may seem obscure to some of you, my readers. To kill time means evidently to lose all count of it, to be "unmindful of the fleeting hours." But if the conscience is roused, and we are imbued with a sense of our responsibility with regard to every day, every hour we live, each hour becomes instinct with possibilities, with the opportunity and power of developing the gifts that we have, the talents entrusted to us, not only with a view to self-improvement and personal enrichment, but with an eye on the Master and His work. "Fellow-workers with Christ" in the redemption of this world,—how great a calling!
The beaver's little paws seem so small; yet by pawful after pawful of earth brought by these small animals, who are working in friendly co-operation with their fellows, great dams that can stem an advancing flood are constructed.
I once heard a story of a poor and not over-wise—as the world counts wisdom—Highlander. I think he was a shepherd, he lived where there were only a few huts widely scattered over the bleak hillsides, and no church was within the reach of the inhabitants of these. God's Spirit moved strongly in the lonely heart, and he determined that a place of worship should be built. Every time he came home to his cot, he brought as many stones as he could collect whilst out, and he placed them in a heap not far from his own door. Those who knew him and who passed that way jeered and laughed at what the simple, loving fellow called his church building.
The heap grew, though very slowly; for many years the shepherd's work went on, that work which was called by the neighbours his "folly." But one day a rich stranger travelling by that lonely and unused way noticed the heap and asked what it meant. On hearing its history, his heart was warmed by the flame of love in that of the poor cotter, and he caused a good building—where divine service was soon held weekly—to be placed on the spot, using up in it, let us hope, those stones which were truly its foundation.