st maturing into performance. Although
Suffolk, as a whole, can scarcely be deemed a productive county, being
generally of a thin, light soil, and still covered with a growth of small
wood, it possesses, nevertheless, spots of exceeding fertility. A
considerable portion of the northern prong of the fork has this latter
character, and Oyster Pond is a sort of garden compared with much of the
sterility that prevails around it. Plain, but respectable dwellings, with
numerous out-buildings, orchards and fruit-trees, fences carefully
preserved, a pains-taking tillage, good roads, and here and there a
"meeting-house," gave the fork an air of rural and moral beauty that,
aided by the water by which it was so nearly surrounded, contributed
greatly to relieve the monotony of so dead a level. There were heights in
view, on Shelter Island, and bluffs towards Riverhead, which, if they
would not attract much attention in Switzerland, were by no means
overlooked in Suffolk. In a word, both the season and the place were
charming, though most of the flowers had already faded; and the apple, and
the pear, and the peach, were taking the places of the inviting cherry.
Fruit abounded, notwithstanding the close vicinity of the district to salt
water, the airs from the sea being broken, or somewhat tempered, by the
land that lay to the southward.

We have spoken of the coasters that ply between the emporium and all the
creeks and bays of the Sound, as well as of the numberless rivers that
find an outlet for their waters between Sandy Hook and Rockaway. Wharves
were constructed, at favourable points, _inside_ the prong, and
occasionally a sloop was seen at them loading its truck, or discharging
its ashes or street manure, the latter being a very common return cargo
for a Long Island coaster. At one wharf, however, now lay a vessel of a
different mould, and one which, though of no great size, was manifastly
intended to go _outside_. This was a schooner that had been recently
launched, and which had advanced no farther in its first equipment than to
get in its two principal spars, the rigging of which hung suspended over
the mast-heads, in readiness to be "set up" for the first time. The day
being Sunday, work was suspended, and this so much the more, because the
owner of the vessel was a certain Deacon Pratt, who dwelt in a house
within half a mile of the wharf, and who was also the proprietor of three
several parcels of land in that neighbourh