pped with a dull tawny red. By and by the sky began to change. The
cloud sank lower, and lay upon the horizon in a perfectly black mass
that threw its shadow upon the landscape. Its lining had deepened in
color to a blood-red, and the clouds higher up the arch of the sky were
ringed with a rich crimson border. Higher still they shaded off into
paler tints, mingled with a copper-like hue that merged in the lighter
clouds into gold. Above these were fleecy, rounded fragments of cloud
floating over the deep blue like burnished brass upon lapis lazuli; and
higher yet, about midway to the zenith, every cloudlet was tinged with
pale yellow. Could such a sky be represented on canvas it would be
condemned as unnatural--a case of the painter's imagination carrying him
beyond the limits of true art. But it was from the reflection in the
lake that the scene derived its weird, supernatural character. The
shadows lay heavily upon the trees and bank that line the western shore.
Upon the edge of the waters, which were so still that not a ripple waved
the line drawn upon the white streak of sand, the deep red of the cloud
upon the horizon reappeared. Nearer were the graduated tints of crimson,
copper, gold, brass and pale yellow, every hue mirrored in the crystal
lake with a fidelity so perfect that one was in doubt whether the
reality or the reflection were the more gorgeous.

To the east and west of the lake, for twenty miles on either side of it,
stretches a pleasant tract, chiefly of rolling woodland, with here and
there a farm or garden. Wherever the land has been cleared and brought
under cultivation it appears to give ample return to the husbandman. But
the least observant traveller can hardly help being struck by the sight
of a few fields of apparently healthy grain surrounded by miles of
brushwood. It is a mystery not yet satisfactorily solved how within
fifty miles of a city like New York so much land should be left
unproductive and untilled. All the evidence, both of experiment and of
opinion, goes to show that the soil, if not the richest in the world, is
far too good to be given over to scrubby bushes and luxuriant weeds.

Leaving, however, a question so abstruse, let us turn southward from
Yaphank and follow the brook that runs down past Carman's until it
empties itself in Fireplace Bay. Again the scenery undergoes a change.
Here is neither the broken, picturesque shore of the north nor the
inland quietude of Ronkonkoma.