The Adventures of a Nature Guide (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1920. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI CHILDREN OF MY TRAIL SCHOOL ONE summer day nearly twenty years ago a number of boys and girls appeared at my Rocky Mountain cabin. They wanted me to go with them to the old beaver colony. A boy and a girl started making the request, but before they could finish every child was asking me to go. "It is more than two miles," I told them, "and we must walk." This but added to their desire to go at once. Stepping softly and without saying a word, we slipped through the woods and peeped from behind the last trees into a grassy opening by the beaver pond, hoping for a glimpse of a coyote or a deer. Then we examined the stumps of aspens recently cut by the beavers. We walked across the dam. We made a little raft of logs and went out to the island house in the pond. Then we built tiny beaver houses and also dugouts in the bank. We played we were beavers. On the way home we turned aside from the trail to investigate a delightful bit of forested wilderness between two brooks. We were explorers in a new country. The grove was dense and full of iss underbrush. It was voted to send out a likely boy and girl to discover how many hundred miles it was through the forest. While waiting we decided to examine one of the brooks, which someone called the Amazon River. We found a delta which one boy insisted was the delta at the mouth of the Mississippi. No one objected and we had discussions concerning deltas, large and small. But the vast wilderness between our two brooks--which contained really about one acre--was reported by our two scouts as altogether too large for us ever to explore. Someone then proposed we should cross the brook on a fallen log to see who the strange people were in the wilderness on the other side. The last boy of the party made a long jum...