CHAPTER VI. 



MOXTATTK POINT. 



THE 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 ths 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 a few houses break the monotony of the 

 dreary expanse, and it is to one of these, distant 



