Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/55

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LONG ISLAND.
51

vary the surface of the intervening ridge; the waters are prolific in every variety of the testaceous and finny tribes, while innumerable wild-fowl allure and repay the sportsman.

Long Island has still many unexplored beauties to reward the attentive tourist. Stretching nearly 150 miles in length, having on its north a sheltered Mediterranean, and bared on the east and south to the rough smiting of the Atlantic surge, its shore, sometimes beautified with country-seats, and towering toward the west into the grandeur of rich and populous cities,—then failing back upon the isolated farm-house, and the whistling ploughboy, anon losing itself in sterile Arabian sands, and frightful cavernous solitudes, it would seem as if some regions of this noble and beautiful Isle contrasted as strangely with each other, as the first rude huts of the twin-brothers on the Palatine Hill, differed from the city of the Cæsars.