44 South Beach. 



obliterated by the sandy waves. This old map also makes 

 the Point about three-eighths of a mile at its greatest 

 breadth; but it is much less than that now, and, ere long, 

 it will be " Crooke's Island," instead of Point. The waves 

 have left but a narrow neck of sand only two or three yards 

 wide in one place, and over this they often wash to the 

 reedy meadows that lay between the beach and the Great 

 Kill. 



There are several lanes that lead from the upland across 

 the meadows to the shore, and muddy, swaley roads are 

 they. The cattails grow high at their sides, and nearer 

 to the shore the taller varieties of salt meadow grass. One 

 of these long, straight lanes, ditched on either side, has 

 always left a pleasing memory picture, with the several 

 hummocks over which it passed, where stood the gnarled 

 wind-torn apple-trees, and where grew a few cabbages 

 surrounded by a fence. I never saw anybody working 

 there, and they might have been grown by the sea-gods or 

 by some wild man of the moors, for all that appeared to 

 the contrary. From my seat under the haystack I could 

 see a lone tree in the distance, that bore a crow's nest in 

 its branches, and the occasional splashing of a musk-rat in 

 the creek nearby, the chirp of a song-sparrow or the 

 squeak of a meadow mouse, indicated the life that was near. 

 The shad-frogs are common on the meadows at times, and 

 the easy-going toad also comes down to the sea. 



Oft have I watched for a long while the soldier-crabs, 

 or " fiddlers," that abound along the creek. I take it 

 that life cannot be very dull to them mid so much socia- 

 bility, they are so neighborly. In retreating to their holes 



