A Colony of Herons 
helps to redeem the landscape reputation of 
this generally unimpressive waste of sand and 
flatness. There is a breeziness of its own, quite 
independent of any currents of air, in the 
rugged scenery of this northwest shore—numer- 
ous bays deeply indenting the coast, vigorous 
hills and pleasing valleys, with a luxuriant 
growth of forests and herbage that show a veg- 
etable ambition painfully wanting on the arid 
plains of the southern and eastern portions of 
this immense Connecticut breakwater. In this 
town of Roslyn lived for many years William 
Cullen Bryant, the legacy of whose name is a 
proud thing for Roslyn. The devotion of the 
Roslynites to the memory of Bryant has been 
doubly lasting and sincere, without doubt, for 
the reason that the poet proved himself a bene- 
factor as well as an ornament, by his donation 
to the town of a substantial library. 
A few years ago this flock of herons lived 
several miles distant from their present quar- 
ters ; but the people living in the neighborhood 
were so annoyed by their disagreeable clamor, 
that they drove them away, whereupon they 
betook themselves to this remote and wooded 
swamp, covering an area of ten or twelve acres. 
Yet even in this out-of-the-way place they were 
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