He is working out from the left bank toward the center of the structure. He and his co-workers never tire of tinkering with the structure, strengthening and improving it. site had been chosen by a trained engineer, a large beaver colony has built its dams and impounded enough water to irrigate several thousand acres. Rincon de Lagunitas (corner of little lakes), the Mexicans call this spot, which is unique in several ways. It is an old glacial cirque, cut into the top of the range as though with a great curved spade, leaving a wall of white cliff, tipped with spruce forest. Within this natural amphitheater, containing perhaps a section of land, are numerous rounded, grassy knolls of glacial drift, with scattered clumps of spruce and aspen among them. A dozen rills, headwaters of the Rio San Antonio, rise here. It is an ideal stronghold for the beavers. None of the streams are more than a foot wide, but the beavers seem to prefer these rills to the larger streams lower down. The groves supply abundant food and building material. The aspen bark seems to be the beavers' staple grocery, while all of his building is done with aspen timber from which the last shred of bark has been removed. Nothing is wasted, and that is a point in his favor when his work is compared with that of humans. Three years ago there were half a dozen ponds, the largest perhaps twenty feet wide, in the Rincon. Last summer the change was almost incredible. A chain of lakes had been created in this land of little water. The largest was about two hundred yards in length and half as wide, while there were twenty The animals gnaw down the trees they want in the little copse, and drag the timber to the river. spillway in the exact middle of each. Near the dams are tracts, sometimes half an acre in extent, from which all the timber has been cut for building purposes. Trees eighteen inches in diameter, which is maximum size for the quaking aspen, are frequently cut. How logs of this size are moved by the beaver is a mystery. Some of them, which fall in awkward positions, are never used, but the proportion of timber wasted is very small. The beavers seldom cut spruce use for refuge when unable to reach a lodge. Some of the dams and lodges are built fifty or sixty feet from timber, and in such cases the beavers have made smooth paths, or skidways, over which they evidently dragged their material from the woods to the water. The beaver apparently never rests. Like a good mechanic, he is always tinkering. Fresh yellow chips are scattered about all of the ponds, and the water is almost always muddy from his work. |