Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, page 1 by Various Authors
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and occupants. Among so many tribes--the Canarsees (who met Hudson when on September 4, 1609, he anchored in Gravesend Bay), the Rockaways, Nyacks, Merrikokes, Matinecocs, Marsapeagues, Nissaquages, Corchaugs, Setaukets, Secataugs, Montauks, Shinecocs, Patchogues, and Manhansetts, to say nothing of the Pequots and Narragansetts on the northern shore of the Sound--a community of usage in regard to nomenclature could hardly be expected. We accordingly find that one of the old names of the island was Mattenwake, a compound of Mattai, the Delaware for "island." It was also called Paumanacke (the Indian original of the prosaic Long Island), Mattanwake (the Narragansett word for "good" or "pleasant land"), Pamunke and Meitowax. For a name, however, at once beautiful and suggestive, appropriate to an island whose sunny shores are strewn with shells, and recalling Indian feuds and customs, savage ornament and tributes paid in wampum, no name equals that we have chosen--Seawanhaka or Seawanhackee, the "Island of Shells."
No general description will give an adequate idea of its changing beauty and wellnigh infinite variety. Its scenery assumes a thousand different aspects between odoriferous Greenpoint and the solitary grandeur of Montauk. If one could only recall the old stagecoach, and, instead of whirling in a few hours from New York to Sag Harbor, creep slowly along the southern shore, and complete the journey of one hundred and ten miles in two days and a half, as they did fifty years ago, a description of the route would be both easy and interesting. Then the old stage lumbered out of Brooklyn about nine o'clock in the morning, a halt was made at Hempstead for dinner, and at Babylon the passengers slept. Starting early, they arrived in due time at Patchogue, where they breakfasted late, and thereby saved their dinner, and at Quogue, about twenty-four miles farther, they supped and slept. Again making an early start without breakfast, they jogged along to Southampton, where the morning meal was taken,