7 ' ' Ko. 
CHAPTER VI. 
MONTAUK POINT. 
Tue eastern end of Long Island, that extremity 
which seems to stretch out like the hand of welcome 
towards the nations of the old world, beckoning 
their inhabitants to our hospitable shores, is divided 
into two long points like the tines of a fork. The 
upper point shuts in Long Island Sound, and protects 
our inland commerce from the violence of the ‘Great 
Deep;” while the lower prong, which is kissed on 
the one side by the blue waters of the Peconic Bay, 
and on the other is buffeted by the billows of the 
great Atlantic, is known as Montauk Point. The 
heaving ocean seems here to have solidified itself 
into a sandy soil, which rises and swells and rolls, 
much after the manner of its mighty prototype, 
except that a scanty garment of tawny grass clothes 
the outlines of the billowy waste. ‘Cattle on a 
thousand hills” here roam in a state of, at least, 
semi-independence, which they occasionally assert 
by charging upon the intruding sportsman in a 
manner which may be intended as playful, but 
which looks somewhat serious. For a dozen miles 
or so only four houses break the monotony of the 
dreary expanse, and it is to one of these, distant 
