Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/51

Rh covered to its summit with graves. The dark blue slate stones, are mossy and mouldering with time. Some of the inscriptions are nearly two hundred years old, and most of them illegible. Such as can be decyphered, exhibit that singular combination of religious sentiment with quaint humor, which is prone to excite a smile. Here is a specimen of one, bearing no date.

Clusters of islands add beauty to the little voyage to Oyster-Pond Point, from the Connecticut shore. Among these are Plumb Island, which formerly bore the sacred appellation of the Isle of Patmos; Shelter-Island, Great and Little Gull Island, whose foundations of solid rock scarcely resent the wasting effects of the waves; and Fisher's Island, containing about four thousand acres, which has been in possession of the Winthrop family ever since its purchase, in 1644, by John Winthrop, the first Governor of Connecticut.