Three months after the boulevard was started the river front for two miles fairly swarmed with workmen. At times there were nearly two thousand men at work there, and from the top of the big stone bridge, under whose high arches the road was to pass, a busy scene was presented. Far down below the hordes of men looked like little black ants crawling about at their work. All day long the little steam-drills that bored holes to blast away the rocks puffed out their little clouds of white smoke; the big pile-drivers thumped on regularly upon the tops of great piles as they sunk deeper and deeper into the soft mud, and clumsy steam-derricks and mud-dredges groaned under their work, while the scores of little carts, with their tiny horses and tiny workmen looked like swarms of bugs and ants quarreling together. The boats were covered with workmen, the shore was black with workmen, the rocky heights were sprinkled with workmen--everywhere it was alive with them. High Bridge was often lined with people looking down at the busy scene below. Perhaps the most interesting part of the work was making the new land to build the roadway on. If they had simply dumped earth into the river, it would soon have washed away with the tides, so they had to begin from the outside and build in toward the shore. First, a swarm of bristling, beetlelike mud-dredges anchored along in line just off the shore, and for many weeks their big scoops chunked up and down in the shallow water, each time bringing up with them great masses of black slimy mud. Scows were loaded down to the water's edge by the dredges, and sent off to dump the mud somewhere else where filling was wanted. When they came back, too, they generally towed behind them rafts of loose logs. For months these logs were coming up the river almost every day, and were anchored off the scene of the work. Hundreds of thousands of loose logs were towed up for this work at different times, and just before the crib-work was begun that part of the river looked like a logging camp. When the dredges had dug a long deep trench in the mud where the outer edge of the roadway was to be, the work of sinking the cribs began. These cribs are made of logs laid crosswise, like old-fashioned log cabins, and fastened together. They were built at a ship-yard, in sections several hundred feet long, and towed up the river to be sunk in the trench. No sooner had they been fastened in place, by a row of piles, than the hordes of workmen began to swarm all over them. The loose logs were hauled up out of the water and laid on the cribs crosswise, and fastened in place with great spikes. [Illustration: CRIB IN FOREGROUND, PILES IN SHOAL WATER, AND WALL OF MASONRY IN BACKGROUND.]