LONG ISLAND. 65 



and free of charge, and take home with him all the fish his 

 luck or skill may bring to his creel. There is no more 

 pleasant or profitable way of. spending a tAvo weeks' vacation 

 than to take a horse and wagon, fill it with provender and 

 equipments, and make a round trip of the entire Island, stop- 

 ping at the various fishing-grounds by the way. The roads 

 are for the most part good ; and when the tourist has passed 

 through Babylon, Jerusalem, and Jericho, and left the wes- 

 tern half of the island behind him, he will find himself among 

 a community hving in primitive simplicity, who have pos- 

 sessed the land for nearly two centuries and a half, — upright, 

 God-serving, well-to-do farmers, who go barefoot and eat 

 with silver spoons — men who have seldom traveled beyond 

 the hmits of the townships in which they were bom, whom 

 cares of state do not perplex, and whose ancestors were the 

 original purchasers of the land from the aboriginal owners, 

 with whom they always Hved in peace.* There he will find 

 a remnant of the Indian tribes themselves, and discover 

 traces of their ancient burial grounds and fortifications. 

 He will discover a nomenclature new and strange, and curious 

 geological freaks ; ponds with no "s-isible outlets that rise and 

 fall with the tides; sand-hills one hundred feet high that 

 shift with every gale that blows; fantastic cliffs and singular 

 tongues of land ; groups of islands, between which the ocean 

 currents set hke a mile-race ; skeletons of wrecks imbedded 

 in the beach; graveyards with one hundred head-stones 

 sacred to entire ships' crews v/ho perished on the strand.. 



A pecuhar and fortune-favored people are the Long Isl- 

 anders, who know how to enjoy life in a quiet way, and do 

 have an unusual variety of its good gifts convenient to their 

 hands. The railroads now bring them the daily papers from 



* The genealogical records* of the author's family show that his 

 paternal ancestor bought at Southold, in 1640, the first piece of land 

 ever obtained from the Indians on the eastern end of Long Island, 

 He originally belonged to the New Haven colony. 

 5 



