LEGENDS OF LONG ISLAND. NO. I. THE WRECKER OF RACCOON BEACH; OR, THE DAUGHTER OF THE SEA. It was during the reign of Anne, of blessed memory, and while the blue laws executed wholesome judgment upon Connecticut sinners, that Jerry Smith sought quiet seats, and a safe retreat, from the persecution that afflicted a man who had kissed his cousin on a Sunday. Wethersfield lost, and the wet sands received him. The people of the classic shores of Jerusalem, and Babylon, and Oyster-bay south, wondered and wondered what could have induced Jerry to go down to that unpeopled, barren spot, to live. Raccoon beach is a ridge of sand. It runs from its western point, seven miles south of Babylon, where Uncle Sam has lately built a light-house-thirty miles due east, averaging three fourths of a mile in breadth. It is one of those insular breast-works, which nature has thrown up, to protect that ancient and respectable country, called Long Island, from the incursions and ravages of the southern tempest. On its northerly side lies a smooth, quiet bay; its southern border is lashed by the ocean. A mere nutshell of a skiff may ride securely in the bay, but wo betides the pennant that floats over the foam of the inlet! versified by irregular hills. The surface of the beach is di- grown up near its centre; and with this exception, scarce a sign of vegetation appears. Myriads of quackes and crows share their solemn roost upon the aforesaid trees, the descendants of happy ancestors, who were rent-free, undisturbed tenants of said gallinary, when Jerry's skiff touched the strand. Jerry Smith knew what he was about, when he put up his Esquimeaux-like hut on the side of one of the beach hills. To be sure, it was cold, and exposed and barren: and it was, moreover, very unsociable to stay there all alone; but what of that, if he could make himself, in two or three years, as rich as old pirate Jones? And after all, he was not so much alone, neither. For there was the bay full of eels, and crabs, and clams, and the surf was sparkling with striped bass, and the air and the water were vocal with the hawnking, and crucking, and perutting, and screaming of geese, and brant, and broadbills, and oldwives, and cormorants and hell-divers, and all the other varieties of the anseric and anatic families. At this early period, too, before too much civilization had unpeopled the land of its rightful lords, the bays of Long Island were frequented by that interesting class of amphibiotics, whom mortals call mermaids. Of the existence of this order of created handiwork, the old colonists had the most substantial and satisfactory evidence. Their songs might be heard every evening, upon the sea, falling and sinking with the setting sun; and at night, in the storm, amid the strangling surges of the breakers; or in the calm, when moonlight and the waves were mixed up so that a body couldn't tell them apart, their siren voices, taking the tone from the elements, filled the air with rich and fearful music. But there was danger in listening to them. People used to put their fingers into their ears, |