In that house the portion of the chamber used for sleeping quarters was
covered with a thick mattress of dry "snake-grass," and the whole
interior was remarkably clean. After blocking and patching up the hole
and covering the place with snow, the hunters threw water over it until
it froze into a solid mass, then they removed the stakes from the
runways and left the rest of the beavers in peace. Loading their catch
upon their toboggans, all set out for home.


BEAVER DAMS AND CANALS

Resides erecting their remarkably strong houses there are two other
ways in which the beavers display wonderful skill: in the building of
their dams and in the excavating of their canals. Their dams are built
for the purpose of retarding, raising, and storing water, in order--in
summer time--to circumvent their enemies by placing a well-watered moat
between their foe and their castle; also to flood a wider area so that
the far-reaching waters of their pond may lap close to the roots of
many otherwise inaccessible trees and thus enable them to fell and
float them to their lodge; and--in winter time--to raise the water high
enough to secure their pond from freezing solid and imprisoning them in
their lodges where they would starve to death, or if they gnawed their
way to freedom, the intense cold of mid-winter would freeze their
hairless tails and cause their death; furthermore, should they escape
from the weather, they would be at the mercy of all their enemies and
would not long survive.

A dam, in the beginning, is usually erected in a small way, just to
raise and expand the waters of some small creek or even those of a
spring; then, as the years go by, it is constantly added to, to