86 LETTERS FROM THE BACKWOODS. 



LETTER XIII 



THE FIRE ISLANDS,, 



How true it is that " half the world does not know 

 how the other half lives." Sixty miles from New 

 York exists a different race of people, who never see 

 a city paper, and only know of what is going on in 

 this great Babel from those who visit them or those 

 who take their game to market. There is a large 

 population living on and about the barren Fire 

 Islands whose whole means of livelihood is the game 

 they kill. These men do not hunt for sport, but as a 

 business ; and the amount of wild fowl annually 

 slaughtered on the southern shore of Long Island, for 

 the New York market, is enormous. A descendant 

 of an old family here, which has owned a large terri- 

 tory on the south shore ever since New York was a 

 colony of England, told me that two families, genera- 

 tion after generation, have had the lease of two 

 islands of barren rocks, for the sole purpose of killing 

 the wild fowl that frequent theui. They allow no others 

 to hunt about them. These hunters pay no attention 

 to the railroad, and make no use of it for the trans- 

 portation of their game to market. They keep a 

 wagon going constantly to and frofti New York, as 



