well too--sail'd more than once around Shelter island, and down to
Montauk--spent many an hour on Turtle hill by the old light-house,
on the extreme point, looking out over the ceaseless roll of the
Atlantic. I used to like to go down there and fraternize with the
blue-fishers, or the annual squads of sea-bass takers. Sometimes,
along Montauk peninsula, (it is some 15 miles long, and good grazing,)
met the strange, unkempt, half-barbarous herdsmen, at that time living
there entirely aloof from society or civilization, in charge, on those
rich pasturages, of vast droves of horses, kine or sheep, own'd by
farmers of the eastern towns. Sometimes, too, the few remaining
Indians, or half-breeds, at that period left on Montauk peninsula, but
now I believe altogether extinct.

More in the middle of the island were the spreading Hempstead plains,
then (1830-'40) quite prairie-like, open, uninhabited, rather sterile,
cover'd with kill-calf and huckleberry bushes, yet plenty of fair
pasture for the cattle, mostly milch-cows, who fed there by hundreds,
even thousands, and at evening, (the plains too were own'd by the
towns, and this was the use of them in common,) might be seen taking
their way home, branching off regularly in the right places. I have
often been out on the edges of these plains toward sundown, and can
yet recall in fancy the interminable cow-processions, and hear the
music of the tin or copper bells clanking far or near, and breathe
the cool of the sweet and slightly aromatic evening air, and note the
sunset.

Through the same region of the island, but further east, extended
wide central tracts of pine and scrub-oak, (charcoal was largely made
here,) monotonous and sterile. But many a good day or half-day did
I have, wandering through those solitary crossroads, inhaling the