MONTAUK AND ITS TOPOGRAPHY. 



One hundred and thirteen miles from New York on the eastern extremity 

 of the south fluke of Long Island is the peninsula of Montauk, famous 

 since 1640 when Captain Lion Gardiner founded Easthampton, the present 

 township of which includes Montauk. 



In approaching it by train from New York, one passes, during the last 

 few miles of the ride, through an apparently ancient oak forest, about four 

 miles in extent, known from the earliest days as the Hither Woods. Quite 

 suddenly the train debouches from these woods onto the open Downs, 

 skirting the edge of a beautiful crescent bay, upon the beach of which the 

 fishing hamlet of Montauk is picturesquely scattered. This tiny village, 

 largely depopulated of its fishermen in the winter, is the last station on the 

 railroad, and is seven miles by road from the lighthouse at Montauk Point, 

 which is the easterly extremity of New York State. 



The topography of Montauk is dominated by the kettleholes, and the 

 areas between them, which in the case of treeless sections are known as 

 The Downs, and give the whole Point a characteristic aspect. For miles 

 one sees nothing but rolling hills, deceptive as to size and the depth of the 

 kettleholes between them, mostly bare of trees, from the easterly edge of 

 the Hither Woods, to just east of Great Pond. 



J. A. Ayres who visited Montauk, and wrote an account of it in 1849, 

 writes of the general aspect of the place as follows: 



"Southeast, we have a very fair representation of the hills of Montauk. 

 Of these hills it is almost impossible to convey a correct idea. Rounded 

 and rolling, but in many cases quite steep and abrupt, not arranged in 

 ridges, but scattered apparently at random ; with no level land among them, 

 but deep cup-shaped hollows seeming like reversed copies of the hills 

 themselves; bare of trees and covered only with a smooth turf, as close as 

 though it had been shorn, their appearance is sui veneris. We cannot place 

 ourselves on any part of the extent which bears the name Montauk, without 

 fully understanding the propriety of the name. It is in truth a "Hilly 

 Land." From Nommonock to Wamponomon* the rolling surface is un- 

 broken, except by the ponds and one or two small spaces which are by 

 courtesy called plains. The highest of these hills, in the western part of 

 the peninsula, are those on which we are standing." 



* Old names for the hills just east of Napeague, and for the "Turtle Hills" on which 

 the Lighthouse now stands at the extreme Point. 



