Point, Long Island, is the most isolated and desolate spot
imaginable during this weather. The frigid monotony of winter has
settled down upon that region, and now it is haunted only by sea fowl.
The bleak, barren promontory whereon stands the light is swept clean
of its summer dust by the violent raking of cold hurricanes across it,
and coated with ice from the wind-dashed spume of the great breakers
hurled against the narrow sand spit which makes the eastern terminus
of the island. The tall, white towered light and its black lantern,
now writhing in frosty northern blizzards, and again shivering in
easterly gales, now glistening with ice from the tempest tossed seas
all about it, and now varnished with wreaths of fog, is the only
habitation worthy of the name for many miles around. Keeper Clark and
his family and assistants are almost perpetually fenced in from the
outside world by the cold weather, and have to hug closely the roaring
fires that protect them in that desolation.

But for ducks and the duck hunter the lighthouse family would die of
inanition. With the cold weather comes the ducks, and they continue to
come till the warmer blasts of spring drive them to the northward.
Montauk Point is a favorite haunt for this sort of wild fowl. It is a
good feeding ground, is isolated, and there is nearly always a weather
shore for the flocks to gather under. But year by year the point is
being more and more frequented by sportsmen, and the reports of their
successes increase the applicants for lodgings at the light. Some 20
gunners were out there last week with the most improved paraphernalia
for the sport, and did telling work. Flight shooting is the favorite
method of taking them. The light stands very near the end of the
point, about a sixteenth of a mile to the west, and all migratory
birds in passing south seem to have it down in their log-book that
they must not only sight this structure, but must also fly over it as
nearly as possible. Hence the variety and extent of the flocks which
are continually passing is a matter of interest and wonder to a
student of natural history as well as to the sportsman. Coots,
whistlers, soft bills, old squaws, black ducks, cranes, belated wild
geese, and, in fact, all sorts of northern birds make up this long and
strange procession, and the air is frequently so densely packed with
them as to be actually darkened, while the keen, whistling music of
their whizzing wings makes a mel