Page:The adventures of Captain Bonneville (IA adventurescaptai00irvi).pdf/168
peculiar bait which they employ. This end of the stick rises about four inches above the surface of the water, the other end is planted between the jaws of the trap. The beaver, possessing an acute sense of smell, is soon attracted by the odor of the bait. As he raises his nose toward it, his foot is caught in the trap. In his fright he throws a somerset into the deep water. The trap being fastened to the pole, resists all his efforts to drag it to the shore; the chain by which it is fastened defies his teeth; he struggles for a time, and at length sinks to the bottom and is drowned.
Upon rocky bottoms, where it is not possible to plant the pole, it is thrown into the stream. The beaver when entrapped often gets fastened by the chain to sunken logs or floating timber; if he gets to shore, he is entangled in the thickets of brook willows. In such cases, however, it costs the trapper diligent search, and sometimes a bout at swimming, before he finds his game.
Occasionally it happens that several members of a beaver family are trapped in succession. The survivors then become extremely shy, and can scarcely be "brought to medicine," to use the trapper's phrase, for "taking the bait." In such case, the trapper gives up the use of the bait and conceals his traps in the usual paths and crossing-places of the household. The beaver now being completely "up to trap," approaches them cautiously, and springs them ingeniously with a stick. At other times he turns the traps bottom upward by the same means. And occasionally even drags them to the barrier and conceals them in the mud. The trapper now give up the contest of ingenuity, and shouldering his traps marches off, admitting that he is not yet "up to beaver."
On the day following Captain Bonneville's supervision of the industrious and frolicsome community of beavers, of which he has given so edifying an account, he succeeded in extricating himself from the Wind River Mountains, and regaining the plain to the eastward, made a great bend to the south, so as to go round the bases of the mountains, and arrived, without further incident of importance, at the old place of rendezvous in Green River valley, on the 17th of September.
He found the caches, in which he had deposited his superfluous goods and equipments, all safe, and having opened and taken from them the necessary supplies, he closed them again, taking care to obliterate all traces that might betray them to the keen eyes of Indian marauders.