EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. 27 



included in my reminiscences and now buried under ground ponds and contents, 

 fish and all. 



Those were great days, too, at Conk Vandewater's, on the South Oyster 

 bay, where the two Judge Bradys and I went sniping on the marshes, and. where 

 I met Fred Mather one day and carried him papoose back, Indian fashion, with 

 a pitchfork trident over his shoulder, bearing seaweed representing Neptune 

 rising from the sea. The Keiths had a marvelous sparkling trout stream, which 

 ran through the woods, and employed a lusty pugilist to protect the property from 

 poachers, who used silken nets as fine as hair meshes and set them in darkest 

 hours. And one night when I was at their shanty with Rev. Jos. L. Duryea, of 

 Brooklyn, who had driven down the island with me in my wagon, we joined them to 

 lie in wait for the trespassers. We had already discovered the seines, and laid 

 by to watch them lift them out. Slyly thev proceeded, and cautiously, arid the 

 bouncers did the rest. 



Down at the east end of the island there are opossums in such numbers as 

 to be a nuisance, and they are found nowhere else in New England. 



From Riverhead west to Islip the unoccupied country is like the plateau 

 which lies north of Fayetteville, N. C, largely covered with scrub oak interspersed 

 with pine clumps and scattering pines, and bedded with frequent patches of white 

 beach sand of ancient deposition threaded by paths running in all directions. Oak 

 hammocks alternate with swamps, swales and creek bottoms which harbor deer, 

 rabbit and quail, and with ponds and outlets which abound in trout, bass, perch 

 and bullheads. Crows, cranes, ducks and bitterns fly from marsh to marsh. 

 Hawks and snakes keep the rodents and other vermin pretty well thinned out. 

 Here and there along shore may be found the seine of the fisherman, his fish house 

 and windmill ; clumps of bayberry bushes ; sailing craft at anchor ; skiffs, punts 

 and pungeys drawn up on the shingle or nestling among the sedge grass on the 

 creeks. No less than one hundred steam and sailing yachts go into winter 

 quarters at Greenport alone. I could fill up my chapter with Long Island reveries, 

 and on the spur of the moment I recall that only last summer I dined with C. F. 

 Creary and David Edgar at their bungalow, while their steam yacht rode at its 

 anchor before us recalling how we and Will L. Brooks, owner of the Clytie, of 

 the New York Yacht Club, spent our winters forty years ago at St. Augustine, 

 Florida, where we kept canoes for sport at the club house down there. I have a 

 gruesome tale of how Brooks was run over by a steamboat in the Race near 

 Plum Gut once upon a time and saved his life in some wonderful way after being 

 afloat ten hours on driftwood. This reminds me that shooting coots and sea ducks 

 over decoys outside of surf which rolls up among the rocks along the coast from 

 Montauk to Maine, the gunners anchor their boats outside the swells and let their 

 decoys tail in shore, where the feeders join them among the breakers. The game 

 is captious, but the combined wave motion makes good aim and gunshot difficult. 



Back in the 50's woodcocks probed for angle worms all around the environs 

 of New York City; perch and sunfish fanned their fins in the collects; snipe 

 worked the Lispenard marsh above Canal street; striped bass were caught at 

 McCombs dam below High Bridge; blackfish and canners took fiddlers and crab 

 bait at Carnarsie, around the wreck of the Black Warrior; tide runners at the 

 Narrows showed up four-pound weakfish; sea bass took the hook all around the 

 Brothers at Hellgate ; and our best sportsmen, like Valloton and Genio C. Scott, 

 hung up big striped bass at Cuttyhunk on eel-skin squids, and drumfish at 

 Barnegat and all along Chesquake creek, where fish swam on tides and ebbs. 



