trength, a gun, and a treacherous thing called a trap. But his eyes are
not equal to the beaver's nose. And he hasn't that familiarity with the
woods to enable him to pursue, which the beaver has to enable it to
escape. And he can't swim long enough under water to throw enemies off
the scent, the way the beaver does.

Now, as he paddles along the network of streams which interlace Northern
forests, he will hardly be likely to stumble on the beaver-dam of last
summer. Beavers do not build their houses, where passers-by will stumble
upon them. But all the streams have been swollen by fall rains; and the
trapper notices the markings on every chip and pole floating down the
full current. A chip swirls past white and fresh cut. He knows that the
rains have floated it over the beaver-dam. Beavers never cut below their
houses, but always above, so that the current will carry the poles
down-stream to the dam.

Leaving his canoe-load behind, the trapper guardedly advances within
sight of the dam. If any old beaver sentinel be swimming about, he
quickly scents the man-smell, upends and dives with a spanking blow of
his trowel tail on the water, which heliographs danger to the whole
community. He swims with his webbed hind feet, the little fore paws
being used as carriers or hanging limply, the flat tail acting the
faintest bit in the world like a rudder; but that is a mooted question.
The only definitely ascertained function of that bat-shaped appendage is
to telegraph danger to comrades. The beaver neither carries things on
his tail, nor plasters houses with it; for the simple reason that the
joints of his caudal appurtenance admit of only slight sidelong
wigglings and a forward sweep between his hind legs, as if he might use
it as a tray for food while he sat back spooning up mouthfuls with his
fore paws.

Having found the wattled homes of the beaver, the trapper may proceed in
different ways. He may, after the fashion of the Indian hunter, stake
the stream across above the dam, cut away the obstruction lowering the
water, break the conical crowns of the houses on the south side, which
is thinnest, and slaughter the beavers indiscriminately as they rush
out. But such hunting kills the goose that lays the golden egg; and
explains why it was necessary to prohibit the killing of beaver for some
years. In the confusion of a wild scramble to escape and a blind
clubbing of heads there was bootless destruction. Old and young, poor