e
various geysers and basins,--a warm and deadly river wherein no fish
breed. I think we crossed it a few dozen times in the course of a day.

Then the sun began to sink, and there was a taste of frost about, and we
went swiftly from the forest into the open, dashed across a branch of
the Firehole River and found a wood shanty, even rougher than the last,
at which, after a forty-mile drive, we were to dine and sleep. Half a
mile from this place stood, on the banks of the Firehole River, a
"beaver-lodge," and there were rumours of bears and other cheerful
monsters in the woods on the hill at the back of the building.

In the cool, crisp quiet of the evening I sought that river, and found a
pile of newly gnawed sticks and twigs. The beaver works with the
cold-chisel, and a few clean strokes suffice to level a four-inch bole.
Across the water on the far bank glimmered, with the ghastly white of
peeled dead timber, the beaver-lodge--a mass of dishevelled branches.
The inhabitants had dammed the stream lower down and spread it into a
nice little lake. The question was would they come out for their walk
before it got too dark to see. They came--blessings on their blunt
muzzles, they came--as shadows come, drifting down the stream, stirring
neither foot nor tail. There were three of them. One went down to
investigate the state of the dam; the other two began to look for
supper. There is only one thing more startling than the noiselessness of
a tiger in the jungle, and that is the noiselessness of a beaver in the
water. The straining ear could catch no sound whatever till they began
to eat the thick green river-scudge that they call beaver-grass. I,
bowed among the logs, held my breath and stared with all my eyes. They
were not ten yards from me, and they would have eaten their dinner in
peace so long as I had kept absolutely still. They were dear and
desirable beasts, and I was just preparing to creep a step nearer when
that wicked old lady from Chicago clattered down the bank, an umbrella
in her hand, shrieking: "Beavers, beavers! Young man, whurr are those
beavers? Good Lord! What was that now?"

The solitary watcher might have heard a pistol shot ring through the
air. I wish it had killed the old lady, but it was only the beaver
giving warning of danger with the slap of his tail on the water. It was
exactly like the "phink" of a pistol fired with damp powder. Then there
were no more beavers--not a whisker-end. The lodge,