The mine of song and story is opened, and the rarest specimens of match songs and "stretched" stories are coined and made current by the members of the different crews. The "smartest team," "chopper," "barker," "the largest tree," "the biggest log," "the greatest day's work," bear or moose story, the _merits_ of crews, teamsters, "bosses," cooks, and swampers, falls and rapids, streams and rivers, all, all come up as themes of converse, song, and story. There is less hurrying in the morning now than in the former part of the driving; let the water rise or fall, it is all the same thing at this point, for the driver has reached the ample channel of the river, where neither falls or rapids occur. A day, and the work is consummated--'tis done! The crews are disbanded: they disperse, some to their homes and farms; some to idleness and recreation; some to hire in the mills to saw the logs thus run; others to take rafts of boards to the head of tide navigation, where hundreds of vessels are in waiting to distribute the precious results of the lumberman's toil to the thousand ports of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, where the sound of saws, planes, and hammers of a million house-wrights, cabinet-makers, carpenters, coopers, and jobbers make the air vocal with the music of cheerful labor, giving bread to the millions, wealth to thousands, and comfort and convenience to all. For this branch of human industry we set up a claim, in point of _rank_, not yet awarded to it by the world. We claim for it greater prominence as a source of wealth--greater respect on the ground of the talent and skill concentrated by the prime operators--greater deference for it as a business--for the endurance, energy, and courage of the thousands of hardy freemen who engage in it, and greater interest from the amount of substantial romance and adventure in the "Life among the Loggers." While it is the professed object of this volume faithfully to portray all the points alluded to, I am nevertheless impressed with the idea that no point which I have treated comes so far short of the reality as the attempt to picture the romance of the business. The boom, which constitutes the general receptacle of all logs, is worthy a few lines of observation. On the Penobscot it stretches up the side of the river in the vicinity of numerous islands, whose location is peculiarly favorable; the boom-sticks run from one island to another, and, where the distance is too great, a pier is sunk--a square frame of stout timber filled with stones. These piers sometimes span the whole river, united by the boom-sticks. This is true of the main boom on the St. Croix. On the Penobscot it stretches up the river about two miles; at the upper end there being a shear boom, which swings out to intercept and turn the logs floating down the river into its ample embrace.