The season, at the precise moment when we desire to take the reader with
us to Oyster Pond, was in the delightful month of September, when the
earlier promises of the year are fast 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.
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