The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-12-15
THE OREGON BEAVER.

THE OREGON BEAVER.
 This animal is nearly extinct. It is nearly as rare now in nature as 1t is on the Oregon coins-called beaver money --0f the early time. All early explorers and settlers of the Oregon country were familiar with the beaver. The Oregonian is not sure that any member of the species now remain. It was said while ago that MT. l.. L. Hawkins of Portland, who, as naturalist, takes interest in all the fauna and flora of the country, knows where there is now a colony or family of beavers, not thirty miles from Portland; but he wouldn't tell, lest betrayal of their retreat might lead to their destruction.
 There was sharcely a more favorite haunt of the beaver than the streams of the Oregon country. It was the beaver, chiefly, that led the explorers and Grappers hither. Following the expedition of Lewis and Clark, the American Fur Company and the Hud- sons Bay Company pushed into the vast Western territory. Furs and pei tries were the main objects of their enterprise. Chief of the valuable fur bearing animals was the beaver. His haunts were the rivers and lakes bor- dered by woodland. A large part of North America was his habitat. Can ada, the upper Mississippi and Missouri regions, the territory of the Columbia and Fraser rivers, and especially the whole of western Oregon and of British Columbia, were his favorite grounds. The animal was always very shy, not prolific, and therefore easily extermi- mated. In many particulars the beaver of the Western Hemisphere was differ ert from the beaver of the Eastern, yet of the same general family. But since the historic period began, it never was So numerous in the Eastern Hemis- phere as it was in the Western, at the time of the discovery and till long af- terwards.
 The demand for the fur of the beaver strange as it may now seem-was one of the factors that combined to break the way into the great wilderness of the West; and in it's result of primary exploration, that led up to settlement, it was the mast important one. It led the trapper and trader from the Great Lakes and the Mississippi to the Vest ern Ocean.
 Swift streams, flowing through rocky canyons, the beaver avoided-unless here and there such streams opened out Into valleys where there were lakes or marshes that could be controlled and where there was timber Or brushwood in some abundance. Where thestream was large and deep and swift the beav- CT could not build dam, nor was it necessary, since the animal could not burrow into the banks and establish his chamber at a steady water level. Where waters were continually swift and uncomfortable, and especially where they were not bordered by an abuud- ance of cottonwood, willow, yellow birch and other favorite wood food, the beaver was absent Where brooks and creeks were small, with proper wood groWths, the beavers were abundant, as we'll as in the natural lakes and quiet reaches of the larger streams.
 The purpose of the beaver in building his dams was to maintain stedy wat CT level. That is, the object of the dam was the formation of an artificial pond, the principal uses of which were the refuge to them when assailed, and the water connection it gave to their lodges and to their burrows in the banks. Hence, as the level of the uond must in all cases have risen from one to two feet above these entrances for the pro- teetion of the animal from pursuit and capture, the surface level of the pond must have been subject to their imne- diate control With this in view, their dams were always constructed. The animal lived wholly on bark and twigs; its food for winter where the climate was severe. was prepared by cutting , poles and branches, which it dragged into places within or beside the lodge, and the bark was stripped off as want ed. The cutting was done mainly with the inferior or lower teeth--the upper teeth, though formidable in appearance, being used mainly for holding. All early settlers of Oregon were familiar with the habits of the beaver. So com mon was the animal, indeed, that it was possible to miss notice of him, Throughout the entire Oregon country west of the Cascade Mountains, there wasscarcely creek or swamp which the, beaver did not inhabft. Strange to say, the Indians lacked the ingen- uity to capture them, which the whites so quickly developed. One reason was doubtless, that the Indians lacked the incentive of profit; for till the whites came the furs had little or no value. But the beaver now is almost un-