By Enos A. Mills
THE SPELL OF THE ROCKIES. Illustrated.
WILD LIFE ON THE ROCKIES. Illustrated.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
The Spell of the Rockies
[Illustration: THE HOME OF THE WHIRLWIND (p. 78)]
The Spell
of the Rockies
By
Enos A. Mills
With Illustrations from Photographs
by the Author
[Illustration]
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1911
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY ENOS A. MILLS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published November 1911_
To
B. W.
Preface
Although I have been alone by a camp-fire in every State and Territory
in the Union, with the exception of Rhode Island, the matter in this
book is drawn almost entirely from my experiences in the Rocky
Mountain region.
Some of the chapters have already appeared in magazines, and I am
indebted to The Curtis Publishing Company, Doubleday, Page and
Company, "Suburban Life," and "Recreation" for allowing me to reprint
the papers which they have published. "Country Life in America"
published "Racing an Avalanche," "Alone with a Landslide," and "A
Rainy Day at the Stream's Source,"--the two last under the titles of
"Alone with a Crumbling Mountain" and "At the Stream's Source." The
"Saturday Evening Post" published "Little Conservationists,"
"Mountain-Top Weather," "The Forest Fire," "Insects in the Forest,"
"Doctor Woodpecker," and "The Fate of a Tree Seed." "Suburban Life"
published "Rob of the Rockies" and "Little Boy Grizzly"; and
"Recreation" "Harvest Time with Beavers."
E. A. M.
Contents
Racing an Avalanche 1
Little Conservationists 17
Harvest Time with Beavers 49
Mountain-Top Weather 69
Rob of the Rockies 91
Sierra Blanca 107
The Wealth of the Woods 121
The Forest Fire 137
Insects in the Forest 171
Dr. Woodpecker, Tree-Surgeon 191
Little Boy Grizzly 205
Alone with a Landslide 221
The Maker of Scenery and Soil 245
A Rainy Day at the Stream's Source 265
The Fate of a Tree Seed 289
In a Mountain Blizzard 307
A Midget in Fur 321
The Estes Park Region 335
Index 351
Illustrations
_The Home of the Whirlwind_ (page 78) _Frontispiece_
_Near the top of Long's Peak._
_A Snow-Slide Region_ 6
_Near Telluride, Colorado._
_Mt. Meeker_ 20
_A Beaver House in Winter_ 38
_Lily Lake, Estes Park._
_A Beaver Canal_ 56
_Length, 334 feet; average width, 26 inches; average
depth, 15 inches._
_Aspens cut by Beaver_ 64
_On slope of Mt. Meeker._
_Wind-blown Trees at Timber-Line_ 76
_Long's Peak._
_Sierra Blanca in Winter_ 110
_Spanish Moss_ 124
_Lake Charles, Louisiana._
_A Forest Fire on the Grand River_ 140
_Near Grand Lake, Colorado._
_A Yellow Pine, Forty-Seven Years after it had been killed by
Fire_ 154
_Estes Park._
_A Tree killed by Mistletoe and Beetles_ 184
_Estes Park._
_Woodpecker Holes in a Pine injured by Lightning_ 198
_Estes Park._
_Johnny and Jenny_ 210
_Near the Top of Mt. Coxcomb_ 228
_Court-House Rock_ 242
_The Hallett Glacier_ 250
_A Crevasse_ 260
_Hallett Glacier._
_Among the Clouds_ 272
_Continental Divide, near Long's Peak._
_Full Streams_ 286
_Near Telluride, Colorado._
_On Grand River, Middle Park, in Winter_ 310
_Snow and Shadow_ 318
_Long's Peak._
_The Home of the Frémont Squirrel_ 326
_On the Little Cimarron River._
_Long's Peak and Estes Park_ 338
Racing an Avalanche
Racing an Avalanche
I had gone into the San Juan Mountains during the first week in March
to learn something of the laws which govern snow slides, to get a
fuller idea of their power and destructiveness, and also with the hope
of seeing them in wild, magnificent action. Everywhere, except on
wind-swept points, the winter's snows lay deep. Conditions for slide
movement were so favorable it seemed probable that, during the next
few days at least, one would "run" or chute down every gulch that led
from the summit. I climbed on skees well to the top of the range. By
waiting on spurs and ridges I saw several thrilling exhibitions.
It was an exciting experience, but at the close of one great day the
clear weather that had prevailed came to an end. From the table-like
summit I watched hundreds of splendid clouds slowly advance, take
their places, mass, and form fluffy seas in valley and cañons just
below my level. They submerged the low places in the plateau, and
torn, silver-gray masses of mists surrounded crags and headlands. The
sunset promised to be wonderful, but suddenly the mists came surging
past my feet and threatened to shut out the view. Hurriedly climbing a
promontory, I watched from it a many-colored sunset change and fade
over mist-wreathed spires, and swelling, peak-torn seas. But the
cloud-masses were rising, and suddenly points and peaks began to
settle out of sight; then a dash of frosty mists, and my promontory
sank into the sea. The light vanished from the heights, and I was
caught in dense, frosty clouds and winter snows without a star.
I had left my skees at the foot of the promontory, and had climbed up
by fingers and toes over the rocks without great difficulty. But on
starting to return I could see only a few inches into the frosty,
sheep's-wool clouds, and quickly found that trying to get down would
be a perilous pastime. The side of the promontory stood over the steep
walls of the plateau, and, not caring to be tumbled overboard by a
slip, I concluded that sunrise from this point would probably be
worth while.
It was not bitter cold, and I was comfortably dressed; however, it was
necessary to do much dancing and arm-swinging to keep warm. Snow began
to fall just after the clouds closed in, and it fell rapidly without a
pause until near morning. Early in the evening I began a mental review
of a number of subjects, mingling with these, from time to time,
vigorous practice of gymnastics or calisthenics to help pass the night
and to aid in keeping warm. The first subject I thought through was
Arctic exploration; then I recalled all that my mind had retained of
countless stories of mountain-climbing experiences; the contents of
Tyndall's "Hours of Exercise in the Alps" was most clearly recalled. I
was enjoying the poetry of Burns, when broken clouds and a glowing
eastern sky claimed all attention until it was light enough to get off
the promontory.
Planning to go down the west side, I crossed the table-like top,
found, after many trials, a break in the enormous snow-cornice, and
started down the steep slope. It was a dangerous descent, for the rock
was steep and smooth as a wall, and was overladen with snow which
might slip at any moment. I descended slowly and with great caution,
so as not to start the snow, as well as to guard against slipping and
losing control of myself. It was like descending a mile of steep,
snow-covered barn roof,--nothing to lay hold of and omnipresent
opportunity for slipping. A short distance below the summit the clouds
again were around me and I could see only a short distance. I went
sideways, with my long skees, which I had now regained, at right
angles to the slope; slowly, a few inches at a time, I eased myself
down, planting one skee firmly before I moved the other.
[Illustration: A SNOW-SLIDE REGION Near Telluride, Colorado]
At last I reached a point where the wall was sufficiently tilted to be
called a slope, though it was still too steep for safe coasting. The
clouds lifted and were floating away, while the sun made the mountains
of snow still whiter. I paused to look back and up, to where the wall
ended in the blue sky, and could not understand how I had come safely
down, even with the long tacks I had made, which showed clearly up
to the snow-corniced, mist-shrouded crags at the summit. I had come
down the side of a precipitous amphitheatre which rose a thousand feet
or more above me. A short distance down the mountain, the slopes of
this amphitheatre concentrated in a narrow gulch that extended two
miles or more. Altogether it was like being in an enormous frying-pan
lying face up. I was in the pan just above the place where the gulch
handle joined.
It was a bad place to get out of, and thousands of tons of snow
clinging to the steeps and sagging from corniced crests ready to slip,
plunge down, and sweep the very spot on which I stood, showed most
impressively that it was a perilous place to be in.
As I stood gazing upward and wondering how the snow ever could have
held while I came down this cloud over the crest in an inverted
cascade.
All this showed for a few seconds until the snowy spray began to
separate and vanish in the air. The snow-cloud settled downward and
began to roll forward. Then monsters of massed snow appeared beneath
the front of the cloud and plunged down the slopes. Wildly, grandly
they dragged the entire snow-cloud in their wake. At the same instant
the remainder of the snow-cornice was suddenly enveloped in another
explosive snow-cloud effect.
A general slide had started. I whirled to escape, pointed my skees
down the slope,--and went. In less than half a minute a tremendous
snow avalanche, one hundred or perhaps two hundred feet deep and five
or six hundred feet long, thundered over the spot where I had stood.
There was no chance to dodge, no time to climb out of the way. The
only hope of escape lay in outrunning the magnificent monster. It came
crashing and thundering after me as swift as a gale and more
all-sweeping and destructive than an earthquake tidal wave.
I made a desperate start. Friction almost ceases to be a factor with
skees on a snowy steep, and in less than a hundred yards I was going
like the wind. For the first quarter of a mile, to the upper end of
the gulch, was smooth coasting, and down this I shot, with the
avalanche, comet-tailed with snow-dust, in close pursuit. A race for
life was on.
The gulch down which I must go began with a rocky gorge and
continued downward, an enormous U-shaped depression between high
mountain-ridges. Here and there it expanded and then contracted, and
it was broken with granite crags and ribs. It was piled and bristled
with ten thousand fire-killed trees. To coast through all these
snow-clad obstructions at breakneck speed would be taking the maximum
number of life-and-death chances in the minimum amount of time. The
worst of it all was that I had never been through the place. And bad
enough, too, was the fact that a ridge thrust in from the left and
completely hid the beginning of the gulch.
As I shot across the lower point of the ridge, about to plunge
blindly into the gorge, I thought of the possibility of becoming
entangled in the hedge-like thickets of dwarfed, gnarled timber-line
trees. I also realized that I might dash against a cliff or plunge
into a deep cañon. Of course I might strike an open way, but certain
it was that I could not stop, nor see the beginning of the gorge, nor
tell what I should strike when I shot over the ridge.
It was a second of most intense concern as I cleared the ridge blindly
to go into what lay below and beyond. It was like leaping into the
dark, and with the leap turning on the all-revealing light. As I
cleared the ridge, there was just time to pull myself together for a
forty-odd-foot leap across one arm of the horseshoe-shaped end of the
gorge. In all my wild mountainside coasts on skees, never have I sped
as swiftly as when I made this mad flight. As I shot through the air,
I had a glimpse down into the pointed, snow-laden tops of a few tall
fir trees that were firmly rooted among the rocks in the bottom of the
gorge. Luckily I cleared the gorge and landed in a good place; but so
narrowly did I miss the corner of a cliff that my shadow collided with
it.
There was no time to bid farewell to fears when the slide started, nor
to entertain them while running away from it. Instinct put me to
flight; the situation set my wits working at their best, and, once
started, I could neither stop nor look back; and so thick and fast did
obstructions and dangers rise before me that only dimly and
incidentally did I think of the oncoming danger behind.
I came down on the farther side of the gorge, to glance forward like
an arrow. There was only an instant to shape my course and direct my
flight across the second arm of the gorge, over which I leaped from a
high place, sailing far above the snow-mantled trees and boulders in
the bottom. My senses were keenly alert, and I remember noticing the
shadows of the fir trees on the white snow and hearing while still in
the air the brave, cheery notes of a chickadee; then the snowslide on
my trail, less than an eighth of a mile behind, plunged into the gorge
with a thundering crash. I came back to the snow on the lower side,
and went skimming down the slope with the slide only a few seconds
behind.
Fortunately most of the fallen masses of trees were buried, though a
few broken limbs peeped through the snow to snag or trip me. How I
ever dodged my way through the thickly standing tree growths is one
feature of the experience that was too swift for recollection.
Numerous factors presented themselves which should have done much to
dispel mental procrastination and develop decision. There were scores
of progressive propositions to decide within a few seconds; should I
dodge that tree on the left side and duck under low limbs just beyond,
or dodge to the right and scrape that pike of rocks? These, with my
speed, required instant decision and action.
With almost uncontrollable rapidity I shot out into a small, nearly
level glacier meadow, and had a brief rest from swift decisions and
oncoming dangers. How relieved my weary brain felt, with nothing to
decide about dodging! As though starved for thought material, I
wondered if there were willows buried beneath the snow. Sharp pains
in my left hand compelled attention, and showed my left arm drawn
tightly against my breast, with fingers and thumb spread to the
fullest, and all their muscles tense.
The lower edge of the meadow was almost blockaded with a dense growth
of fire-killed trees. Fortunately the easy slope here had so checked
my speed that I was able to dodge safely through, but the heavy slide
swept across the meadow after me with undiminished speed, and came
crashing into the dead trees so close to me that broken limbs were
flung flying past as I shot down off a steep moraine less than one
hundred feet ahead.
All the way down I had hoped to find a side cañon into which I might
dodge. I was going too rapidly to enter the one I had seen. As I
coasted the moraine it flashed through my mind that I had once heard a
prospector say it was only a quarter of a mile from Aspen Gulch up to
the meadows. Aspen Gulch came in on the right, as the now slightly
widening track seemed to indicate.
At the bottom of the moraine I was forced between two trees that stood
close together, and a broken limb of one pierced my open coat just
beneath the left armhole, and slit the coat to the bottom. My momentum
and the resistance of the strong material gave me such a shock that I
was flung off my balance, and my left skee smashed against a tree. Two
feet of the heel was broken off and the remainder split. I managed to
avoid falling, but had to check my speed with my staff for fear of a
worse accident.
Battling breakers with a broken oar or racing with a broken skee are
struggles of short duration. The slide did not slow down, and so
closely did it crowd me that, through the crashing of trees as it
struck them down, I could hear the rocks and splintered timbers in its
mass grinding together and thudding against obstructions over which it
swept. These sounds, and flying, broken limbs cried to me "Faster!"
and as I started to descend another steep moraine, I threw away my
staff and "let go." I simply flashed down the slope, dodged and
rounded a cliff, turned awkwardly into Aspen Gulch, and tumbled heels
over head--into safety.
Then I picked myself up, to see the slide go by within twenty feet,
with great broken trees sticking out of its side, and a snow-cloud
dragging above.
Little Conservationists
Little Conservationists
Twenty-four years ago, while studying glaciation on the slope of
Long's Peak, I came upon a cluster of eight beaver houses. These
crude, conical mud huts were in a forest pond far up on the
mountainside. In this colony of our first engineers were so many
things of interest that the fascinating study of the dead Ice King's
ruins and records was indefinitely given up in order to observe
Citizen Beaver's works and ways.
The industrious beaver builds a permanent home, keeps it clean and in
repair, and beside it stores food supplies for winter. He takes
thought for the morrow. These and other commendable characteristics
give him a place of honor among the horde of homeless, hand-to-mouth
folk of the wild. His picturesque works add a charm to nature and are
helpful to mankind. His dams and ponds have saved vast areas of soil,
have checked many a flood, and helped to equalize stream-flow.
A pile of granite boulders on the edge of the pond stood several feet
above the water-level, and from the top of these the entire colony and
its operations could be seen. On these I spent days observing and
enjoying the autumnal activities of Beaverdom.
It was the busiest time of the year for these industrious folk.
General and extensive preparations were now being made for the long
winter amid the mountain snows. A harvest of scores of trees was being
gathered, and work on a new house was in progress, while the old
houses were receiving repairs. It was a serene autumn day when I came
into the picturesque village of these primitive people. The aspens
were golden, the willows rusty, the grass tanned, and the pines were
purring in the easy air.
[Illustration: MT. MEEKER]
The colony-site was in a small basin amid morainal débris at an
altitude of nine thousand feet above the sea-level. I at once
christened it the Moraine Colony. The scene was utterly wild. Peaks of
crags and snow rose steeply and high above; all around crowded a
dense evergreen forest of pine and spruce. A few small swamps reposed
in this forest, while here and there in it bristled several gigantic
windrows of boulders. A ragged belt of aspens surrounded the several
ponds and separated the pines and spruces from the fringe of
water-loving willows along the shores. There were three large ponds in
succession and below these a number of smaller ones. The dams that
formed the large ponds were willow-grown, earthy structures about four
feet in height, and all sagged down stream. The houses were grouped in
the middle pond, the largest one, the dam of which was more than three
hundred feet long. Three of these lake dwellings stood near the upper
margin, close to where the brook poured in. The other five were
clustered by the outlet, just below which a small willow-grown,
boulder-dotted island lay between the divided waters of the stream.
A number of beavers were busy gnawing down aspens, while others cut
the felled ones into sections, pushed and rolled the sections into
the water, and then floated them to the harvest piles, one of which
was being made beside each house. Some were quietly at work spreading
a coat of mud on the outside of each house. This would freeze and defy
the tooth and claw of the hungriest or the strongest predaceous enemy.
Four beavers were leisurely lengthening and repairing a dam. A few
worked singly, but most of them were in groups. All worked quietly and
with apparent deliberation, but all were in motion, so that it was a
busy scene. "To work like a beaver!" What a stirring exhibition of
beaver industry and forethought I viewed from my boulder-pile!
At times upward of forty of them were in sight. Though there was a
general coöperation, yet each one appeared to do his part without
orders or direction. Time and again a group of workers completed a
task and without pause silently moved off and began another.
Everything appeared to go on mechanically. It produced a strange
feeling to see so many workers doing so many kinds of work
effectively and automatically. Again and again I listened for the
superintendent's voice; constantly I watched to see the overseer move
among them; but I listened and watched in vain. Yet I feel that some
of the patriarchal fellows must have carried a general plan of the
work, and that during its progress orders and directions that I could
not comprehend were given from time to time.
The work was at its height a little before midday. Nowadays it is rare
for a beaver to work in daylight. Men and guns have prevented daylight
workers from leaving descendants. These not only worked but played by
day. One morning for more than an hour there was a general frolic, in
which the entire population appeared to take part. They raced, dived,
crowded in general mix-ups, whacked the water with their tails,
wrestled, and dived again. There were two or three play-centres, but
the play went on without intermission, and as their position
constantly changed, the merrymakers splashed water all over the main
pond before they calmed down and in silence returned to work. I gave
most attention to the harvesters, who felled the aspens and moved
them, bodily or in sections, by land and water to the harvest piles.
One tree on the shore of the pond which was felled into the water was
eight inches in diameter and fifteen feet high. Without having even a
limb cut off, it was floated to the nearest harvest pile. Another,
about the same size, which was procured some fifty feet from the
water, was cut into four sections and its branches removed; then a
single beaver would take a branch in his teeth, drag it to the water,
and swim with it to a harvest pile. But four beavers united to
transport the largest section to the water. They pushed with fore
paws, with breasts, and with hips. Plainly it was too heavy for them.
They paused. "Now they will go for help," I said to myself, "and I
shall find out who the boss is." But to my astonishment one of them
began to gnaw the piece in two, and two more began to clear a narrow
way to the water, while the fourth set himself to cutting down another
aspen. Good roads and open waterways are the rule, and perhaps the
necessary rule, of beaver colonies.
I was impatient to have a close view of a beaver cutting down a tree,
and at last one came prospecting near where I was hidden. After a
prolonged period of repose and possibly reflection he rose, gazed into
the treetop, as though to see if it were entangled, then put his fore
paws against the tree, spread his hind legs, sat back on his extended
tail, and took a bite from the trunk. Everything in his actions
suggested that his only intention was to devour the tree deliberately.
He did most of the cutting from one side. Occasionally he pulled out a
chip by leaning backward; sometimes he pried it out by tilting his
head to the horizontal, forcing his lower front teeth behind it, then
splitting it out by using his jaws as a lever. He was a trifle more
than an hour in felling a four-inch tree; just before it fell he
thudded the ground a few times with his tail and ran away.
I became deeply interested in this colony, which was situated within
two miles of my cabin, and its nearness enabled me to be a frequent
visitor and to follow closely its fortunes and misfortunes. About the
hut-filled pond I lingered when it was covered with winter's white,
when fringed with the gentian's blue, and while decked with the
pond-lily's yellow glory.
Ruin befell it before my first visit ended. One morning, while
watching from the boulder-pile, I noticed an occasional flake of ash
dropping into the pond. Soon smoke scented the air, then came the
awful and subdued roar of a forest fire. I fled, and from above the
timber-line watched the storm-cloud of black smoke sweep furiously
forward, bursting and closing to the terrible leaps of red and
tattered flames. Before noon several thousand acres of forest were
dead, all leaves and twigs were in ashes, all tree-trunks blistered
and blackened.
The Moraine Colony was closely embowered in a pitchy forest. For a
time the houses in the water must have been wrapped in flames of
smelter heat. Could these mud houses stand this? The beavers
themselves I knew would escape by sinking under the water. Next
morning I went through the hot, smoky area and found every house
cracked and crumbling; not one was inhabitable. Most serious of all
was the total loss of the uncut food supply, when harvesting for
winter had only begun.
Would these energetic people starve at home or would they try to find
refuge in some other colony? Would they endeavor to find a grove that
the fire had missed and there start anew? The intense heat had
consumed almost every fibrous thing above the surface. The piles of
garnered green aspen were charred to the water-line; all that remained
of willow thickets and aspen groves were thousands of blackened
pickets and points, acres of coarse charcoal stubble. It was a dreary,
starving outlook for my furred friends.
I left the scene to explore the entire burned area. After wandering
for hours amid ashes and charcoal, seeing here and there the seared
carcass of a deer or some other wild animal, I came upon a beaver
colony that had escaped the fire. It was in the midst of several acres
of swampy ground that was covered with fire-resisting willows and
aspens. The surrounding pine forest was not dense and the heat it
produced in burning did no damage to the scattered beaver houses.
From the top of a granite crag I surveyed the green scene of life and
the surrounding sweep of desolation. Here and there a sodden log
smouldered in the ashen distance and supported a tower of smoke in the
still air. A few miles to the east, among the scattered trees of a
rocky summit, the fire was burning itself out: to the west the sun was
sinking behind crags and snow; near-by, on a blackened limb, a
south-bound robin chattered volubly but hopelessly.
While I was listening, thinking, and watching, a mountain lion
appeared and leaped lightly upon a block of granite. He was on my
right, about one hundred feet away and about an equal distance from
the shore of the nearest pond. He was interested in the approach of
something. With a nervous switching of his tail he peered eagerly
forward over the crown of the ridge just before him, and then crouched
tensely and expectantly upon his rock.
A pine tree that had escaped the fire screened the place toward which
the lion looked and where something evidently was approaching. While I
was trying to discover what it could be, a coyote trotted into view.
Without catching sight of the near-by lion, he suddenly stopped and
fixed his gaze upon the point that so interested the crouching beast.
The mystery was solved when thirty or forty beavers came hurrying into
view. They had come from the ruined Moraine Colony.
I thought to myself that the coyote, stuffed as he must be with the
seared flesh of fire-roasted victims, would not attack them; but a
lion wants a fresh kill for every meal, and so I watched the movements
of the latter. He adjusted his feet a trifle and made ready to spring.
The beavers were getting close; but just as I was about to shout to
frighten him the coyote leaped among them and began killing.
In the excitement of getting off the crag I narrowly escaped breaking
my neck. Once on the ground I ran for the coyote, shouting wildly to
frighten him off; but he was so intent upon killing that a violent
kick in the ribs first made him aware of my presence. In anger and
excitement he leaped at me with ugly teeth as he fled. The lion had
disappeared, and by this time the beavers in the front ranks were
jumping into the pond, while the others were awkwardly speeding down
the slope. The coyote had killed three. If beavers have a language,
surely that night the refugees related to their hospitable neighbors
some thrilling experiences.
The next morning I returned to the Moraine Colony over the route
followed by the refugees. Leaving their fire-ruined homes, they had
followed the stream that issued from their ponds. In places the
channel was so clogged with fire wreckage that they had followed
alongside the water rather than in it, as is their wont. At one place
they had hurriedly taken refuge in the stream. Coyote tracks in the
scattered ashes explained this. But after going a short distance they
had climbed from the water and again traveled the ashy earth.
Beavers, like fish, commonly follow water routes, but in times of
emergency or in moments of audacity they will journey overland. To
have followed this stream down to its first tributary, then up this to
where the colony in which they found refuge was situated, would have
required four miles of travel. Overland it was less than a mile.
After following the stream for some distance, at just the right place
they turned off, left the stream, and dared the overland dangers. How
did they know the situation of the colony in the willows, or that it
had escaped fire, and how could they have known the shortest, best way
to it?
The morning after the arrival of the refugees, work was begun on two
new houses and a dam, which was about sixty feet in length and built
across a grassy open. Green cuttings of willow, aspen, and alder were
used in its construction. Not a single stone or a handful of mud was
used. When completed it appeared like a windrow of freshly raked
shrubs. It was almost straight, but sagged a trifle downstream. Though
the water filtered freely through, it flooded the flat above. As the
two new houses could not shelter all the refugees, it is probable that
some of them were sheltered in bank tunnels, while room for others may
have been found in the old houses.
That winter the colony was raided by some trappers; more than one
hundred pelts were secured, and the colony was left in ruins and
almost depopulated.
The Moraine Colony site was deserted for a long time. Eight years
after the fire I returned to examine it. The willow growth about the
ruins was almost as thrifty as when the fire came. A growth of aspen
taller than one's head clung to the old shore-lines, while a close
seedling growth of lodge-pole pine throve in the ashes of the old
forest. One low mound, merry with blooming columbine, was the only
house ruin to be seen.
The ponds were empty and every dam was broken. The stream, in rushing
unobstructed through the ruins, had eroded deeply. This erosion
revealed the records of ages, and showed that the old main dam had
been built on the top of an older dam and a sediment-filled pond. The
second dam was on top of an older one still. In the sediment of the
oldest--the bottom pond--I found a spear-head, two charred logs, and
the skull of a buffalo. Colonies of beaver, as well as those of men,
are often found upon sites that have a tragic history. Beavers, with
Omar, might say,--
"When you and I behind the veil are past,
Oh but the long long while the world shall last."
The next summer, 1893, the Moraine site was resettled. During the
first season the colonists put in their time repairing dams and were
content to live in holes. In autumn they gathered no harvest, and no
trace of them could be found after the snow; so it is likely that they
had returned to winter in the colony whence they had come. But early
in the next spring there were reinforced numbers of them at work
establishing a permanent settlement. Three dams were repaired, and in
the autumn many of the golden leaves that fell found lodgment in the
fresh plaster of two new houses.
Most beaver dams are built on the installment plan,--are the result of
growth. As the pond fills with sediment, and the water becomes
shallower, the dam is built higher and, where conditions require it,
longer; or, as is often the case, it may be raised and lengthened for
the purpose of raising or backing water to the trees that are next to
be harvested. The dams are made of sticks, small trees, sods, mud,
stones, coal, grass, roots,--that is, combinations of these. The same
may be said of the houses. For either house or dam the most convenient
material is likely to be used. But this is not always the case; for
the situation of the house, or what the dam may have to endure,
evidently is sometimes considered, and apparently that kind of
material is used that will best meet all the requirements.
Most beaver dams are so situated that they are destined earlier or
later to accumulate sediment, trash, and fallen leaves, and become
earthy; then they will, of course, be planted by Nature with grass,
shrubby willows, and even trees. I have seen many trees with birds'
nests in them standing on a beaver dam; yet the original dam had been
composed almost entirely of sticks or stones.
Why do beavers want or need ponds? They have very heavy bodies and
extremely short legs. On land they are slow and awkward and in the
greatest danger from their enemies,--wolves, lions, bears, and
wildcats; but they are excellent swimmers, and in water they easily
elude their enemies, and through it they conveniently bring their
harvests home. Water is necessary for their existence, and to have
this at all times compels the construction of dams and ponds.
In the new Moraine Colony one of the houses was torn to pieces by some
animal, probably a bear. This was before Thanksgiving. About midwinter
a prospector left his tunnel a few miles away, came to the colony, and
dynamited a house, and "got seven of them." Next year two houses were
built on the ruins of the two just fallen. That year's harvest-home
was broken by deadly attacks of enemies. In gathering the harvest the
beavers showed a preference for some aspens that were growing in a
moist place about one hundred feet from the water. Whether it was the
size of these or their peculiar flavor that determined their election
in preference to nearer ones, I could not determine. One day, while
several beavers were cutting here, they were surprised by a mountain
lion, which leaped upon and killed one of the harvesters. The next
day the lion surprised and killed another. Two or three days later a
coyote killed one on the same blood-stained spot, and then overtook
and killed two others as they fled for the water. I could not see
these deadly attacks from the boulder-pile, but in each case the sight
of flying beavers sent me rushing upon the scene, where I beheld the
cause of their desperate retreat. But despite dangers they persisted
until the last of these aspens was harvested. During the winter the
bark was eaten from these, and the next season their clean wood was
used in the walls of a new house.
One spring I several times visited a number of colonies while trying
to determine the number of young brought forth at a birth. Six furry
little fellows sunning themselves on top of their rude home were the
first discovery; this was the twelfth of May. By the close of the
month I had come in sight of many youngsters, and found the average
number to be five. One mother proudly exhibited eight, while another,
one who all winter had been harassed by trappers and who lived in a
burrow on the bank, could display but one. In the Moraine Colony the
three sets of youngsters numbered two, three, and five. Great times
these had as they were growing up. They played over the house, and
such fun they had nosing and pushing each other off a large boulder
into the water! A thousand merry ripples they sent to the shore as
they raced, wrestled, and dived in the pond, both in the sunshine and
in the shadows of the willows along the shore.
The beaver has a rich birthright, though born in a windowless hut of
mud. Close to the primitive place of his birth the wild folk of both
woods and water meet and often mingle; around it are the
ever-changing, never-ending scenes and silences of the water or the
shore. He grows up with the many-sided wild, playing amid the enameled
flowers, the great boulders,--the Ice King's marbles,--and the fallen
logs in the edge of the mysterious forest; learning to swim and slide;
listening to the strong, harmonious stir of wind and water; living
with the stars in the sky and the stars in the pond; beginning
serious life when brilliant clouds of color enrich the hills; helping
to harvest the trees that wear the robes of gold, while the birds go
by for the southland in the reflective autumn days. If Mother Nature
should ever call me to live upon another planet I could wish that I
might be born a beaver, to inhabit a house in the water.
The autumn of the year when I watched the young beavers I had the
pleasure of seeing some immigrants pass me _en route_ for a new home
in the Moraine Colony. Of course they may have been only visitors, or
have come temporarily to assist in the harvesting; but I like to think
of them as immigrants, and a number of things testified that
immigrants they were. One evening I had long been lying on a boulder
by the stream below the colony, waiting for a gift from the gods. It
came. Out of the water within ten feet of me scrambled the most
patriarchal, as well as the largest, beaver that I have ever seen. I
wanted to take off my hat to him, I wanted to ask him to tell me the
story of his life, but from long habit I simply lay still and watched
and thought in silence. He was making a portage round a cascade. As
he scrambled up over the rocks, I noticed that he had but two fingers
on his right hand. He was followed, in single file, by four others;
one of these was minus a finger on the left hand. The next morning I
read that five immigrants had arrived in the Moraine Colony. They had
registered their footprints in the muddy margin of the lower pond. Had
an agent been sent to invite these colonists, or had they come out of
their own adventurous spirit? The day following their arrival I
trailed them backward in the hope of learning whence they came and why
they had moved. They had traveled in the water most of the time; but
in places they had come out on the bank to go round a waterfall or to
avoid an obstruction. Here and there I saw their tracks in the mud and
traced them to a beaver settlement in which the houses and dams had
been recently wrecked. A near-by rancher told me that he had been
"making it hot" for all beavers in his meadow. During the next two
years I occasionally saw this patriarchal beaver or his tracks
thereabout.
[Illustration: A BEAVER HOUSE IN WINTER]
It is the custom among old male beavers to idle away two or three
months of each summer in exploring the neighboring brooks and streams.
But they never fail to return in time for autumn activities. It thus
becomes plain how, when an old colony needs to move, some one in it
knows where to go and the route to follow.
I had enjoyed the ways of "our first engineers" for several years
before it dawned upon me that their works might be useful to man and
that the beaver might justly be called the first conservationist. One
dry winter the stream through the Moraine Colony ran low and froze to
the bottom, and the only trout in it that survived were those in the
deep holes of these beaver ponds. Another demonstration of their
usefulness came one gray day. The easy rain of two days ended in a
heavy downpour and a deluge of water on the mountainside above. This
mountain-slope was still barren from the forest fire. It had but
little to absorb or delay the excess of water, which was speedily shed
into the stream below. Flooding down the stream's channel came a
roaring avalanche or waterslide, with a rubbish-filled front that was
five or six feet high. This expanded as it rolled into the pond and
swept far out on the sides, while the front, greatly lowered, rushed
over the dam. Much of this water was caught and temporarily detained
in the ponds, and by the time it poured over the last dam its volume
was greatly reduced and its speed checked. The ponds had broken the
rush and prevented a flood.
Every beaver pond is a settling-basin that takes sediment and soil
from the water that passes through it. If this soil were carried down
it would not only be lost, but it would clog the deep waterway, the
river channel. Deposited in the pond, it will in time become
productive. During past ages the millions of beaver dams in the United
States have spread soil over thousands of square miles and rendered
them productive. Beavers prepared the way for numerous forests and
meadows, for countless orchards and peaceful, productive valleys.
The Moraine colonists gathered an unusually large harvest during the
autumn of 1909. Seven hundred and thirty-two sapling aspens and
several hundred willows were massed in the main pond by the largest
house. This pile, which was mostly below the water-line, was three
feet deep and one hundred and twenty-four feet in circumference. Would
a new house be built this fall? This unusually large harvest plainly
told that either children or immigrants had increased the population
of the colony. Of course, a hard winter may also have been expected.
No; they were not to build a new house, but the old house by the
harvest pile was to be enlarged. One day, just as the evening shadow
of Long's Peak had covered the pond, I peeped over a log on top of the
dam to watch the work. The house was only forty feet distant. Not a
ripple stirred among the inverted peaks and pines in the clear,
shadow-enameled pond. A lone beaver rose quietly in the scene from the
water near the house. Swimming noiselessly, he made a circuit of the
pond. Then for a time, and without any apparent purpose, he swam back
and forth over a short, straight course; he moved leisurely, and
occasionally made a shallow, quiet dive. He did not appear to be
watching anything in particular or to have anything special on his
mind. Yet his eyes may have been scouting for enemies and his mind may
have been full of house plans. Finally he dived deeply, and the next I
saw of him he was climbing up the side of the house addition with a
pawful of mud.
By this time a number of beavers were swimming in the pond after the
manner of the first one. Presently all began to work. The addition
already stood more than two feet above the water-line. The top of this
was crescent-shaped and was about seven feet long and half as wide. It
was made mostly of mud, which was plentifully reinforced with willow
cuttings and aspen sticks. For a time all the workers busied
themselves in carrying mud and roots from the bottom of the pond and
placing these on the slowly rising addition. Eleven were working at
one time. By and by three swam ashore, each in a different direction
and each a few seconds apart. After a minute or two they returned from
the shore, each carrying or trailing a long willow. These were
dragged to the top of the addition, laid down, and trampled in the
mud. Meantime the mud-carriers kept steadily at their work; again
willows were brought, but this time four beavers went, and, as before,
each was independent of the others. I did not see how this work could
go on without some one bossing the thing, but I failed to detect any
beaver acting as overseer. While there was general coöperation, each
acted independently most of the time and sometimes was apparently
oblivious of the others. These beavers simply worked,--slowly,
silently, and steadily; and they were still working away methodically
and with dignified deliberation when darkness hid them.
Most beaver houses are conical and round of outline. This house
originally was slightly elliptical and measured forty-one feet in
circumference. After enlargement it was almost a flattened ellipse and
measured sixty-three feet in circumference. Generally I have found
that small beaver houses are round and large ones elliptical.
One of the last large interesting works of the Moraine Colony was the
making of a new pond. This was made alongside the main pond and about
fifty feet distant from it. A low ridge separated the two. As it was
nearly one hundred feet from the stream, a ditch or canal was dug from
the stream, below the main pond, to fill it. The new pond was made for
the purpose of reaching with a waterway an aspen grove on its farther
shore.
The making of the dam showed more forethought than the getting of the
water into the pond. With the exception of aspen, no dam-making
material such as beavers commonly use was to be found. The population
of the colony was now large, while aspen, the chief food-supply, was
becoming scarce. Would the beavers see far enough ahead to realize
this? Evidently they did; at any rate not a single precious aspen was
used in making the dam. Close to the dam-site was a supply of young
lodge-pole pines; but it is against the tradition of the beaver to cut
green pines or spruces. Two of these lodge-poles were cut, but
evidently these pitchy, smelly things were not to the beavers' taste
and no more of them were used.
Not far away were scores of fire-killed trees, both standing and
fallen. "Surely," I said to myself, when two dead chunks had been
dragged into place, "they are not going to use this dead timber?" A
beaver avoids gnawing dead wood; it is slow work, and besides is very
hard on the teeth. Most of these dead trees were inconveniently large,
and were fire-hardened and full of sand-filled weather-cracks; but
contrary to all my years of observation, they, after long, hard labor,
built an excellent dam from this material.
* * * * *
I have determined to do all I can to perpetuate the beaver, and I wish
I could interest every man, woman, boy, and girl in the land to help
in this. Beaver works are so picturesque and so useful to man that I
trust this persistent practicer of conservation will not perish from
the hills and mountains of our land. His growing scarcity is awakening
some interest in him, and I hope and half believe that before many
years every brook that is born on a great watershed will, as it goes
swiftly, merrily singing down the slopes toward the sea, pass through
and be steadied in a poetic pond that is made and will be maintained
by our patient, persistent, faithful friend the beaver.
Harvest Time with Beavers
Harvest Time with Beavers
One autumn I watched a beaver colony and observed the customs of its
primitive inhabitants as they gathered their harvest for winter. It
was the Spruce Tree Colony, the most attractive one of the sixteen
beaver municipalities on the big moraine on the slope of Long's Peak.
The first evening I concealed myself close to the beaver house by the
edge of the pond. Just at sunset a large, aged beaver of striking,
patriarchal appearance, rose in the water by the house and swam
slowly, silently round the pond. He kept close to the shore and
appeared to be scouting to see if an enemy lurked near. On completing
the circuit of the pond, he climbed upon the end of a log that was
thrust a few feet out into the water. Presently several other beaver
appeared in the water close to the house. A few of these at once left
the pond and nosed quietly about on the shore. The others swam about
for some minutes and then joined their comrades on land, where all
rested for a time.
Meanwhile the aged beaver had lifted a small aspen limb out of the
water and was squatted on the log, leisurely eating bark. Before many
minutes elapsed the other beaver became restless and finally started
up the slope in a runway. They traveled slowly in single file and one
by one vanished amid the tall sedge. The old beaver slipped
noiselessly into the water, and a series of low waves pointed toward
the house. It was dark as I stole away in silence for the night, and
Mars was gently throbbing in the black water.
This was an old beaver settlement, and the numerous harvests gathered
by its inhabitants had long since exhausted the near-by growths of
aspen, the bark of which is the favorite food of North American
beaver, though the bark of willow, cottonwood, alder, and birch is
also eaten. An examination of the aspen supply, together with the
lines of transportation,--the runways, canals, and ponds,--indicated
that this year's harvest would have to be brought a long distance. The
place it would come from was an aspen grove far up the slope, about a
quarter of a mile distant from the main house, and perhaps a hundred
and twenty feet above it. In this grove I cut three notches in the
trunks of several trees to enable me to identify them whether in the
garnered pile by a house or along the line of transportation to it.
The grounds of this colony occupied several acres on a terraced,
moderately steep slope of a mountain moraine. Along one side rushed a
swift stream on which the colonists maintained three but little used
ponds. On the opposite side were the slope and summit of the moraine.
There was a large pond at the bottom, and one or two small ponds, or
water-filled basins, dotted each of the five terraces which rose
above. The entire grounds were perforated with subterranean
passageways or tunnels.