Post 24329
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The Cascade colonists held on for the winter. Their pond was deep, and their careful repair of the dam had enabled them to retain water to the very top of it. However, beaver cannot long endure water that is stagnant. This is especially true in winter-time. A beaver house is almost without ventilation, but its entrance ways are full of water; the fresh water of the pond appears to absorb impurities from the air of the house. Apparently stagnant water will not do this. Then, too, a stagnant pond freezes much more rapidly than the waters of a pond that are constantly stirred and aerated by the inflow of fresh water. The Cascade colonists entered the winter with an abundant food-supply that was stored close to the house. The pond was full of water, but it was becoming stagnant. The drought continued and no snow fell. This was another disadvantage to the colony. If a pond is thickly blanketed with snow, it does not freeze so deeply nor so rapidly as when its surface is bare. By the middle of October the pond was solidly frozen. Drought and continued cold weather came and stayed. Christmas week not a drop of water was flowing from the pond and apparently none was flowing into it. The ice was clear, and, the day I called, there appeared to be digging going on in the pond beneath the ice; close to the dam the water was so roily that I could not see into it.
On the first of February I sounded the ice in a number of places. It seemed to be frozen solidly to the bottom. This pond was circular in outline, and the house stood near the centre in about three feet of water. I climbed up on the house and stood there for some time. Commonly in the winter an inhabited beaver house gives a scent to the small amount of air that escapes from the top, and this tells of the presence of the living beaver inside. But I was unable to detect the slightest beaver scent in the air. Apparently the water in the pond was frozen from top to bottom; probably all the beaver had perished, unless they had managed to dig out, as they sometimes do, by tunneling beneath the dam into the brook-channel below. Many old beaver ponds have a subway in the mud of the bottom. One opening is close to the entrance of the house; the other at a point on shore a few feet or several yards beyond the edge of the pond. This offers a means of escape from the pond in case it is frozen to the bottom or if it be drained. A careful search failed to reveal any tunnel, new or old, through which these beaver might have escaped.
I determined to know their fate and went to my cabin for an axe and a shovel. A hole was cut in the ice midway between the beaver house and the food-pile,–a pile of green aspen cuttings about twelve feet away from the house. The pond was solidly frozen to the bottom, and the beaver had all been caught. The entrances to their house were full of ice. One beaver was found at the food-pile, where he apparently had been gnawing off a bark-covered stick. One was dead between the food-pile and the house. The others were dead by the entrance of an incomplete tunnel beneath the dam, which they apparently had been digging as a means of escape when death overtook them. One had died while gnawing at the ice-filled entrance of the house. Inside of the house were the bodies of two very old beaver and four young ones, frozen solid.