agility in biggest boots. He made the proverb, "As easy as falling off a log."
Hardly less important is the Damster. To him it falls to conserve the waters at a proper level. At his dam, generally below a lake, the logs collect and lie crowded. The river, with its obstacles of rock and rapid, would anticipate wreck for these timbers of future ships. Therefore, when the spring drive is ready, and the head-driver is armed with his jack-boots and his iron-pointed sceptre, the damster opens his sluices and lets another river flow through atop of the rock-shattered river below. The logs of each proprietor, detected by their marks, pay toll as they pass the gates and rush bumptiously down the flood.
Far down, at some water-power nearest the reach of tide, a boom checks the march of this formidable body. The owners step forward and claim their sticks. Dowse takes all marked with three crosses and a dash. Sowse selects whatever bears two crescents and a star. Rowse pokes about for his stock, inscribed clip, dash, star, dash, clip. Nobody has counterfeited these hieroglyphs. The tale is complete. The logs go to the saw-mill. Sawdust floats seaward. The lumbermen junket. So ends the log-book.
"Maine," said our host, the Damster of Umbagog, "was made for lumbering-work. We never could have got the trees out, without these lakes and dams."
