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 I3o THt{ CONDOR VoL. IX weeks and during that time I have spent but about three nights in camp.' Miss Alexander has hired a man by the name of A1 Hasselborg to go with us. He is an accurate observer and possesses a great deal of local knowledge of the islands and is altogether the best woodsman that I have ever seen. He had spent some time prospecting in the interior of the island and had found three lakes, two small and one large one; but he had no boat so could not tell how large they were or where their outlets were. The first lake is about four or five miles due west of Mole Harbor. The second one is really just a continuation of the first and together they are about 3 or four miles long and very deep, as in some places a 100-ft. line would not touch the bottom' 100 yards off shore. These two lakes are connected by a rapid stream and a 30-foot waterfall with the large lake, which is also very deep. We packed the canoe up to the first lake and then packed up some grub and made camp for a few days. There were lots of beaver signs and cutting all around the lake and about 10 o'clock one morning when we were out in the canoe, a beaver came swimming around a. bend and dove. When he came up again I began shoot- ing at him with the rifle. I missed the first three times but the fourth shot just cut thru the skull between his eyes. He was evidently young and foolish and had been out late and was just going home or else I wouldn't have got him; because a beaver is nobody's fool I can tell you. An old wise one would put a coyote way back in the infant class. The lake's shore is very irregular and on many of the small points you can see little padded-down places in the grass at the water's edge where a beaver sits and chews the bark off of sticks. Usually there is a little pile of sticks from half to two inches in diameter and six inches to two feet long lying about. These are peeled and that makes them conspicuous. When eating the beaver squats and hunches himself up and then takes the stick in his fore paws and keeps twisting it round and round while he nips the bark off. One reminded me very much of a hungry man attacking a roasting ear of corn. They cut canals back into the woods for 50 feet or so, sometimes, so as to get back to the spruce trees. They prefer the willow, but as that is only found in a few favored localities most of them cut down small spruce trees. If no spruce is handy they will sometimes eat crabapple, huckleberry, and, as a last resort, alder. In the big lake, where there was a large stream coming in, we found a number of fine dams. Some of these dams were at least 100 yards long and in places four or five feet high. These formed a reservoir covering several acres. Above this dam there was a series of other dams; so taking it all together it was the dammedest creek I ever saw. I think that the beavers show their greatest engineering skill in the way that they divide the water so as to keep all the dams full and water-ways full between them. They fix the dams so that there is just a little water running over all the way along so that it does not wash out anywhere. Most of the beavers lived in the holes in the bank, but others built houses. These houses resemble mammoth woodrat houses, as they are six feet high and 10 or 12 feet across at the base. The poorer ones were just a pile of saplings and sticks thrown together while the better ones looked as tho some one had shoveled mud on them. As many as six or eight beavers may live together in one house. They begin to come out of their houses about 6 o'clock in the evening and stay out until 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning. They are very shy and if an old one sees you he hunches himself up and brings his tail down with a pop on the water and you think that some one shot close by. If you bother them much they will leave and move to some other locality. We have secured six specimens so far, all males. They are all very dark seal brown, almost black. There are a number back there and yet every one says that