authorship remained a mystery, and the enthusiastic reception of Mrs. Gaskell's unique biography, it might seem that, at present, those writings have begun to relax their hold upon the reading public. But the crowds of strangers, both native and foreign, who every summer flock to Haworth to read for themselves that pathetic record in the little church, and turn away disappoint

ed from the closed door of the parsonage, prove that there still exists a strong interest in the lives that were so sorrowful, and yet so bravely lived.

For Emily and Anne there was short time for performance, though, in what they gave, there was glorious promise of future achievement; and for Charlotte, too, we can but echo the lament of her friend: "If she had but lived!"

On the morning of the fourth of July, 1869, two individuals, setting foot for the first time in their lives upon Long Island ground, stepped off the gangplank of the steamer Traveller, and found themselves standing in the clear, crisp morning air on the wharf at Sag Harbor.

"Lookin' for sum body?" queried an early-risen native, who stood with both hands in his pockets, leaning reflectively against a pile of boards.

main range. The wagon was, if possible, a more melancholy affair than the horse. Two of the wheels had lost several of their spokes, and the bottom was a sort of irregular lattice-work covered with oat-straw.

With many misgivings we climbed in and sat down on the tail-board, which served for a seat.

The distance to East Hampton from Sag Harbor is about eight miles, the road-a good turnpike-winding nearly

66 Stage don't run fourth of July. Want to git over to Hampton?"

"Yes."

"Fust rate."

"Fetch him along."

The native removed his hands from their comfortable place of refuge, and sauntered away up-street, while Carlos and I sat down upon the string-piece to await results.

In half an hour the equipage arrived. "Bless my soul!" was all I could say.

"You don't expect that animal to pull all of us, do you?"

"Thunder! You wait 'n' see. Git right in and I'll show ye."

We gazed at the spavined, knockkneed brute doubtfully. Its back was a perfect sierra, flattening in the middle into a great central depression, and rising again, in either direction, into three or four well-defined peaks, with sundry lateral spurs jutting from the

scrub-oak, which cover the sandy hills on either side as far as the eye can reach. It is hard to imagine any thing more dreary than this ride on ordinary occasions, although on that morning the clear, pure morning air, intoxicating to our senses as a whiff of nitrous oxide, made the journey very enjoyable.

We had resolved upon walking from East Hampton to Montauk Light, if such thing were possible, and were desirous of obtaining information in regard to the practicability of the feat. By reference to a map of the eastern portion of Long Island, it will be seen that an unbroken ocean-beach extends from Montauk Point westward for more than thirty miles. This desolate waste, seldom visited by the general traveller, appeared to offer great temptations for the pedestrian who desired to see the Atlantic in all its original savageness, although the account given us by our driver that morning was any thing but encouraging. The distance from East Hampton to Montauk Point was twen

ty-one miles. Three miles would bring us to the little village of Amagansett, and after that we should not see a single habitation for ten miles. Between these two points lay the dreadful Napeague Beach, where the mosquitos were said to be terrific. No one lived upon it. The remaining eleven miles boasted of houses at equal distances of three miles. Thus there were three houses between Amagansett and the Light.

We came down into East Hampton about seven o'clock, and drove up its broad, green-carpeted main street. The village is like a dream of some English rural town-a quaint, quiet, sleepy old place, with three or four great whitearmed windmills and an antiquated church or two, whose roofs are covered with a bright green moss. The glory of the village lies in the lovely emerald sward which covers the roadway from edge to edge, leaving a single wheeltrack stretching like a strip of brown ribbon down the middle. Our beautiful equipage set us down at the residence of a Mr. Isaacs, where we were immediately introduced to an excellent breakfast spread upon one end of a table in an old-fashioned dining-room, with a dismal great clock in one corner. Our ride had sharpened our appetites sufficiently to do ample justice to the meal, and Don Carlos pocketed all the bread and cheese we were unable to eat. I regret to chronicle so sad a breach of good manners, but wher. the reader remembers that a walk of ten or fifteen miles was in store for us before dinner, he will excuse the poor fellow, perhaps. At eight o'clock we left Hampton, with its grass-grown streets and its windmills, and, shouldering our knapsacks, started for the sea. The road turned directly to the east on clearing the village, and led, for a couple of miles, through pleasant, rolling fields, dusted with pretty patterns of buttercups and the white pasture-thistle (cirsium pumilum). Then, turning into a small piece of young oak woods, it brought us to Amagansett-a pretty little bunch of houses, not more than two

dozen, all told. Here we could hear the distant roar of the sea distinctly, and in a few moments, on ascending a sandy hill, its boundless blue horizon burst upon us. Below us was the beach, a dozen rods, perhaps, wide, and beyond was the broad, illimitable expanse of tumbling water, with nothing to the east, south, or west-nothing between us and Europe. The surf was crashing upon the shore in heavy, constant, determined surges - -no feeble, broken waves, but the mighty swells of the Atlantic, gathered up in ponderous masses, and hurled upon the beach with resistless force.

Crossing the belt of sand-hills which rise between the beach proper and the cultivatable fields, we came down to the surf, where an old wreck lay half-buried in the sand, with the sea washing through and through its naked ribs. To the northeast stretched the lonely beach for apparently an endless distance, the breakers combing upon it in an unbroken wall of emerald green, ten or twelve feet high, and then toppling over with a single crash, like a peal of thunder. The sand was soft and the shore inclined at an angle of nearly forty degrees, so that the walking was heavy and tiresome; and, as we took our course along the line of the surf, it was only by keeping close to the water that we could find hard footing. By this means, whenever a heavier wave than usual struck the shore, we were pretty certain to get our feet and legs thoroughly soaked. Added to this, the tide was rising all the morning, and we were driven farther and farther up the beach, where, as the sand was drier, the walking was more difficult.

This was Napeague Beach, and we found it the perfection of desolation. Throughout the whole day not a living thing appeared upon the shore; not a weed or fish was thrown up by the waves, not a solitary sail was there upon the vast horizon. The ocean terrified us. It was awful. It was unlike any thing I had ever seen elsewhere. The surf pounded upon the shore with such terrible, ponderous force, that we were

cowed by the sense of its dreadful power. It was more fascinating than Niagara, but it made one tremble with a vague fear. The beach stretched its sandy waste along mile after mile, and on our right was the sea, tumbling in upon the shore in constant, ceaseless surges. The roar was continual. It never stopped for a moment. All day long the music of the sea rang in our ears, and the picture of its boundless horizon will not soon pass away from my memory.

The coast was so free from stones that objects cast up by the waves upon the sand assumed an unnatural magnitude, from the lack of any thing to compare them with. An oyster-can, at a short distance, appeared as large as a barrel, and the smallest wrecks looked like those of the largest vessels. These wrecks were very numerous. Nearly every two miles we came upon a bleaching skeleton, half-charred by the wreck ers' fires, and we soon ceased to count them. In several places we passed the "timbers" of a whale, the remains of two that had been harpooned off Napeague during the previous winter. On our left the sandy dunes, rising to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, and covered with a scanty growth of beachgrass (balamagrostis arenaria), shut out all view toward the north, and the curving shore allowed us glimpses of only a mile or so ahead at a time.

We walked until eleven o'clock before thinking of our whereabouts, sometimes sitting down to rest upon some stranded wreck, and gazing off upon the straight horizon of the sea, sometimes picking up a shell of the mactra solidissima, which was almost the only treasure besides drift-wood which the waves offered us. But, as the sun approached the zenith, we began to look out for the house. I climbed the highest sand-hill, and looked around. Napeague Bay, upon the Sound shore, was visible, shining blue in the distance; but no building, save a wrecking-house in a sandy hollow, could be seen. A half mile further brought a chimney into view, and soon the house-a rough,

unpainted affair, built some distance from the beach-made its appearance. Here we obtained a refreshing dipper of delicious water, and permission to rest awhile on the door-step.

This house was ten miles from Montauk Light, and the first dwelling east of Napeague Beach. Between this and Amagansett the ordinary road winds through a flat, marshy district, draining toward the north, famous for the ferocity of its mosquitos, whose attacks we had escaped by choosing our own path along the shore. Four miles to the eastward was "Osborne's," after which came a hiatus of three miles more, which brought the traveller to "Stratton's," the last of these lonely dwellers by the sea, whose principal occupation seems to be the tending of the cattle which are pastured every summer upon the tract known as the "Hampton Commons.". These commons, the property of the town of East Hampton, extend from Napeague to the Government land at the extremity of the Point, and we were told that from two to three thousand "critters" were annually sent there to graze.

As the distance to Osborne's was but four miles, we determined upon walking there for our dinner, and another hour upon the beach brought us to an excellent meal spread beneath Mr. O.'s hospitable roof. Here, as we found ourselves upon storied ground, we quartered for the night.

Immediately below this house, on the morning of the twentieth of February, 1958, the ship John Milton, of New Bedford, on a return-voyage from the Chincha Islands, came on shore in the midst of a blinding snow-storm, and went to pieces. Every soul perished. The bodies of the captain-Ephraim Harding-the first mate, and twentytwo sailors were washed on shore and decently buried in the little churchyard at Hampton. No traces of the wreck are now to be scen, except a timber or two sticking through the sand at low water. The sea has covered all the rest. It is hard to believe such things as these of yonder sleepy, deceptive ex

panse of blue; but nearly every mile of this desolate, wreck-strewn coast has its own history of suffering and death. Its barren sands have been the last land which the mortal eyes of many a shipwrecked sailor have beheld, and have thus acquired, for the lonely walker by the ceaseless surf, a rare and terrible sublimity.

All of these habitations upon Montauk are prepared for the reception of guests. As a general thing, the traveller, if he is not expecting a Fifth Avenue Hotel in the wilderness, will fare well. Osborne's is the principal rendezvous for the Montauk sportsmen in the Fall, on account of its proximity to Fort Pond and Great Pond, the two largest bodies of fresh water on Long Island, the latter being more than six hundred acres in extent. These ponds, both of which are near the Sound shore, and not visible from the Atlantic side, are the grand shooting-grounds for geese, duck, plover, teal, and snipe. In October and November these birds are to be found here in incredible numbers. We were told that it was no uncommon sight to see the surface of Great Pond literally covered with wild geese-to the number of fifty thousand. registers at Osborne's and at the Light were mainly filled with the names of hunters and the records of their exploits.

The

It was after eight o'clock next morning when we got under way again. At first we kept the beach, but in the course of three or four miles the shore became so covered with boulders, that we were fain to find a smoother path upon the bluffs above. These boulders were smooth and clean, except below the line of the surf, where they were covered with rock-weed and quantities of white and purple sea-moss, which gave out an odor of salt as pungent as the smell of ammonia. The land rose rapidly after leaving Osborne's, and soon reached an altitude of over fifty feet, the bluffs approaching very near the beach and ending very abruptly. On reaching the wreck of the Amster dam, which came ashore in 1865, we -19

VOL. VI.

struck inland across the hills, and first sighted the Light at ten minutes past nine. Soon afterward we came to the first fence we had seen since leaving Amagansett. In getting over it I nearly stepped upon a striped adder, which immediately showed fight. He was a pretty fellow, but we had no stick to kill him with, and so were obliged to let him alone. He stopped quite still, looking at us with his head raised several inches from the ground, until we had passed on. After this we came upon two more, and soon judged it advisable to mind our footsteps a little.

In the hollows of the hills were numerous little ponds of fresh water, completely filled with pond-lilies, and a great number of rush-drains crossed the pasture, around which we were obliged to make such long détours that our seven miles soon lengthened into nine. We were now upon the back-bone of Montauk, with the Atlantic thundering beneath the bluffs on our right, and the Sound glistening in the morning sunlight far away upon the left. At twenty minutes past ten o'clock we reached the Light, where the hospitable keeper, Captain Ripley, welcomed us with all the warmth of an old acquaintance.

The light-house stands upon the top of the bluff, some ten or fifteen rods from the verge. The view from this spot can be better imagined by consulting the geographical position of Montauk Point than by reading any description. We could realize now that this was the real Montauk. Toward every point of the compass but one there was nothing to be seen but the wide, savage Atlantic. The level, straight line of the horizon described four fifths of a circle, and upon three sides of the bluff the ocean surf was roaring and crashing with terrific fury. The keeper's house-a large, comfortable buildingstands close to the tower, and is connected with it by a covered passageway. The bluff itself, the keeper told us, is rapidly wearing away toward the Light, so that the tower will have to be moved in the course of a few more years. He said we would be surprised at the

violence of the waves beating upon the Point in a winter gale. Upon the southern side the surf is never less than six or eight feet high, although upon the north the water is frequently as calm as a mill-pond. We found a marked contrast between the Sound shore and that upon the Atlantic side. The former was teeming with life, while the latter was perfect desolation. Upon the north beach the sea rolls in in white and gentle surges, giving an opportunity for the rocks to cover their sides with rockweed, and the muscles and barnacles a clinging-place beneath. Here we saw numbers of beach birds (Charadrius melodus) and white sea-gulls, many of the latter flying so close to our heads that, with a stick, we could have hit a dozen of them. Upon this north beach I obtained, during the day, several specimens of five-fingers (asterias rubens), all of different colors, and a number of the huge valves of the mactra solidissima. We found, also, the mytilus edulis and mya arenaria in large quantities, and thousands of the broken pods of the sting-ray, from which the fish had escaped, were scattered over the sand. The bluff, at the extremity of the Point, is highest upon the Atlantic side. Thence it descends in successive rolls of white, glistening sand toward the north, until it ends in a broad, hard beach, a dozen yards in width. The land immediately around the Light is a perfect desert of loose sand, covered with beach-grass, and wholly uncultivatable, except in one or two of the hollows, where the light-house-keepers have discovered soil sufficient to support a small vegetable-garden. The only actual soil is that upon the high ridge of the hills; and here the cutting, furious gales from the sea have destroyed all vegetable life except the short pasture-grass. Upon the slopes the sand and beach-grass have usurped every thing.

We spent the afternoon in gathering algae and sea-mosses along the south side of the bluff, just inside the "Rip." It was a rather lively business, for the surf, as it struck the rocks outside,

would fly so far that it was difficult to reach the best specimens without getting a ducking. All along beneath the bluff are strewn the remains of an illfated schooner, lost here, with all on board, nine years since. The grave of one of the crew is situated at a short distance from the Light, outside of the Government land. It is not often that a shipwreck takes place directly upon the Point, although Montauk Light has been made a life-saving station, and supplied with boats and life-cars. These are contained in a wrecking-house, built in the hollow below the Light. In it are two immense life-boats, a patent lifecar, ropes, oars, a mortar for throwing a bomb, with line attached, and every thing necessary for use in case of disaster. There is, also, a stove, with utensils, and fire built ready to kindle. In one corner is a supply of rockets, blue-lights, and Roman candles, and in the loft above are extra ropes, spars, &c. Nothing seems to be wanting, and yet these things are next to useless. Should a vessel come ashore at the Light, there could not be found men enough on all Montauk or Napeague to man one of these great boats, much less launch it.

Three miles down the north coast lies the Indian Reservation. There are now four families of the aborigines upon these lands, the sole remnant of the once powerful Montauk nation. We called at several of their dwellings, and found them poor affairs, although generally neat and clean. The light-keeper said they were an improvident set, with the traditional love for firewater, and were mainly supported by the charity of their white neighbors at the Light. On our way across the pasture to the settlement we killed another striped adder, and saw a second, which escaped us. One of the Indians said these adders were "bad snake," and that it was unsafe to venture into the grass thereabouts with out going armed with a stick. Snakes, in fact, seem to be the principal production of the country. Altogether, Montauk is a most singular anomaly. Here was a savage, desolate coast, strewn with bleaching wrecks and echoing with