BEAVER-CANALS AND BEAVER-MEADOWS—ANTIQUITY OF
BEAVER-WORKS—BEAVERS AND RAILWAY COMPANIES—WHITE BEAVERS.
We have seen the beaver as a dam-maker and a house-builder, but we have
not yet considered him as a maker of canals. This we will now proceed
to do. In the construction of the dam and lodge, a great quantity of
wood is, as we have seen, required, and when the trees do not grow very
thickly, those on the edge of the pond are soon cut down and made use
of, and gradually, as more and more fall, the beavers have to go farther
and farther away from the water, in order to procure fresh timber. To
transport this felled timber, overland, to the pond becomes a more and
more laborious task, and at last an impossible one, many of the logs made
use of being of considerable, or even of great size, when compared with
that of the beaver itself. To overcome this difficulty, the beaver sets
to work and excavates a trench or cutting in the ground, about three feet
wide and as many deep. Commencing it at the brink of the pond, he carries
it on to the spot where the trees he covets are growing, and when these,
in their turn, have been cut down, he lengthens it till it reaches
others, and so on, following the trees as they gradually recede from the
neighbourhood of the pond. Of course the water runs up into the channel
thus excavated, so that now, when the beaver has cut up his logs, he has
only to float them down the canal that he has so cleverly excavated. This
he does by swimming with them in his mouth, or pushing them in front of
him with his paws and nose; the water (though there is no current to
help) offers very little resistance, and it is now quite an easy matter.
Both the trappers and the Indians call these cuttings canals; and canals
they are, it is obvious, just as much as those we make for barges to ply
on. According to the size of the pond, and the scarcity or otherwise of
the trees near its banks, will be the number of the canals made from
it by the beavers. A pond figured in Mr. Morgan’s book has five, at
different points, all round it, and some might have a great many more. It
is wonderful the length to which some of these canals extend. One that
Mr. Morgan speaks of was close on six hundred feet, and there are some
that are longer.
Beavers live together, not in large numbers, as used to be supposed, but
two or three families in the same pond. Such ponds, however, continue
to be inhabited by the descendants of such families, from generation
to generation, and as the dams are always being repaired and extended
by them, and the canals lengthened, they at last become works of
considerable magnitude. No one who first saw one of these great, ancient
beaver-dams would suppose it to be the work of comparatively small
animals, or, indeed, of any animal at all, except man. As for the canals,
their banks soon become covered with moss and vegetation, so that they
look like natural sluggish streams, oozing through the flat, marshy
land. Mr. Morgan, speaking of them, says: “When I first came upon these
canals, and found they were christened with this name, both by Indians
and trappers, I doubted their artificial character, and supposed them
referable to springs as their producing cause; but their form, location,
and evident object showed conclusively that they were beaver excavations.”
Again, in considering these wonderful works of a quadruped from the
point of view of the intelligence required for their production, the
same writer says: “In the excavations of artificial canals, as a means
for transporting their wood by water to their lodges, we discover, as it
seems to me, the highest act of intelligence and knowledge performed by
beavers. Remarkable as the dam may well be considered, from its structure
and objects, it scarcely surpasses, if it may be said to equal, these
waterways, here called canals, which are executed through the low lands
bordering their ponds, for the purpose of reaching the hard wood, and of
affording a channel for its transportation to their lodges. To conceive
and execute such a design presupposes a more complicated and extended
process of reasoning than that required for the construction of a dam,
and although a much simpler work to perform, when the thought was fully
developed, it was far less to have been expected from a mute animal.”
However, I am not sure that I follow Mr. Morgan here. To make a dam must
have required as much intelligence as to make a canal, if we suppose that
the beaver first said to itself, “I will put an obstacle in the way of
the stream, and thus by checking the flow of the water, and causing it
to flood its banks, I shall have a nice large pond to live and play in.”
That, surely, would have been just as clever as for it to have said or
thought, “I will make a waterway from the pond to the trees, and then I
shall be able to float my logs down by water instead of having to drag
them over the land.”
[Illustration: BEAVERS TREE FELLING.
When the tree is about to fall the beavers make a dash for the water to
escape the unwelcome attentions of their foes, which will be attracted to
the spot by the crash of the falling tree.]
But I think myself that the beaver never had either of these ideas
in its mind—at least not at first—but that it found out by a lot of
little accidents—or, as we say, through practice—the advantages of
both proceedings, and then acted accordingly. I see, for instance, in
the plates which Mr. Morgan gives of the beaver-ponds, with the canals
running out of them, that there are some little waterways which are not
marked as canals. These, I suppose, must be meant to be natural, and
whether they are or not, it is almost certain that there would be some
shallow and elongated depressions in the ground round the pond, into
which the water in it would run. It would be quite natural for the beaver
to take advantage of these, and, in pulling large logs of wood into them,
he would have found that they moved more easily when the ground near
these little channels was muddy and sloppy. But simply by pulling and
tugging at them there, he would have been making the ground muddier and
sloppier, and so, having found out, by accident, the good he was doing,
he might have gone on doing it on purpose, and thus, little by little,
have got to making a canal. Now, perhaps, he knows exactly what he makes
it for, and works just as one of our own engineers would, but even of
this we cannot be quite sure. However, this is a book about facts, so I
will leave these speculative questions for someone else (or for nobody)
to decide.
There is one other thing that the beavers make, besides their dams, their
lodges, and their canals, and that is their meadows; but beaver-meadows,
as they are called, are not the result of design on the part of the
animal, but only the necessary consequence of its actions in other
respects. Their appearance, and the way in which they are caused, are
thus described by Mr. Morgan: “Where dams are constructed,” he tells
us, “the waters first destroy the timber within the area covered by the
ponds. When the adjacent lands are low, they are occasionally overflowed
after heavy rains, and are at all times saturated with water from the
ponds. In course of time the trees within the area affected are totally
destroyed; and in their place a rank, luxuriant grass springs up. A level
meadow, in the strict and proper sense of the term, is thus formed;
although much unlike the meadow of the cultivated farm. At a distance
they appear to be level and smooth; but when you attempt to walk over
them, they are found to be a series of hummocks, formed of earth and
a mass of coarse roots of grass rising about a foot high, while around
each of them there is a narrow strip of bare and sunken ground. The
bare spaces, which are but a few inches wide, have the appearance of
innumerable watercourses, and through them the water passes when the
meadows are overflowed.”
These meadows, though not designed by the beavers, are yet useful to
them, for, as Mr. Morgan says: “In addition to the nutriment which the
roots of these grasses afford to the beavers, the meadows themselves
are clearings in the wilderness, by means of which the light as well as
the heat of the sun is let in upon their lodges.” Of course, when land
that was once dry becomes overflowed with water, when peculiar-looking
meadows appear, that were not there before, when canals wind about
through them, and when trees that were formerly abundant grow thinner
or even disappear, a considerable change takes place in the appearance
of the country; and so numerous, till lately, were beavers in North
America, that a very large extent of territory may be said to be the
work, not, indeed, of their hands, but of their paws and teeth. Sometimes
the Indians have been alarmed at the number of trees cut down by these
animals, thinking they would not have sufficient fuel for their own
encampments, but here, I think, they must have feared without cause,
since beavers and trees have both been plentiful in the country from time
immemorial.
On one occasion, however, by making a dam across a small stream running
parallel with one of the principal railway lines of Canada, the beavers
produced an accumulation of water against the railway embankment. As
it was feared that the line might be flooded, or the earth supporting
it weakened, with possible disastrous consequences, a cutting was made
through the centre of the dam, thus lowering the water to its original
level. The beavers, however, were accustomed to repairing their dams,
and did so in this instance. The company again cut the dam, the beavers
again repaired it, and this conflict between an animal and one of the
chief commercial enterprises of the country continued, till the dam,
having been fifteen times cut through, was at length abandoned by its
architects. This shows, certainly, great perseverance on the part of
the beavers, but it shows also that they are capable of learning by
experience. Why the dam should be always cut through, they could not,
probably, conceive, and experience had hitherto taught them that the
proper way of dealing with a breach was by repairing it. It now taught
them that there were some breaches which it was no good to repair, and
perhaps it took them no longer to learn, or, rather, to infer this, than,
under similar circumstances, it would have taken ourselves. A general
will often try many assaults upon a fortified place before he comes to
the conclusion that it is too strong to be taken.
As has been mentioned before, incidentally, the beaver belongs to
the order of rodents or gnawing animals, of which our most familiar
examples are the rat and the mouse. He is the second largest animal of
the order, the first being the great capybara of South America, which
creature weighs as much as 90 or even 100 lbs. The beavers, when full
grown, may weigh as much as 50, but it is rare for one to attain this
size. Though usually of a reddish brown, black beavers are sometimes met
with, and white ones, though extremely rare, are not absolutely unknown.
Traherne in his _Journey to the Northern Ocean_ says: “In the course of
twenty years’ experience in the countries about Hudson’s Bay, though I
have travelled six hundred miles to the west of the sea-coast, I never
saw but one white beaver-skin, and it had many reddish and brown hairs
along the ridge of the back. The sides and the belly were of a glossy,
silvery white.” Prince Maximilian, too, who also travelled in North
America, says that he “saw one beautifully spotted with white,” and that
“yellowish white and pure white ones are not unfrequently caught on the
Yellowstone.” This, however, was a long time ago. Not only white beavers,
but brown ones too are getting rare now.
Beavers are nocturnal, so that it is not so easy to see them working at
their dams and lodges as it might otherwise be. However, it would not be
very easy, even if they worked in the day, for persecution has made them
extremely shy and wary, and perhaps has even had something to do with
their habits in this respect. On land the beaver is somewhat awkward,
and not at all fast, so that, though he is able to gallop, an ordinary
dog could soon run him down. The water is his more natural element, and
here he is easy and graceful. His sight, at least in the daytime, is
not very good, but his smell and his hearing are most acute. Upon the
latter sense he relies so much that he will often choose out some little
hillock or rising piece of ground, where he will sit up on his hind legs
like a sentinel, listening attentively. Then, says Mr. Morgan, his best
biographer, “he will retire, but only to return at intervals, and repeat
the observation until satisfied whether or not danger is near.” With this
interesting trait we will take our leave of this most interesting and
badly treated animal.