Waves battered against the gravel banks, carrying away rocks, stones and clay. Undermined by the storms of winter, washed out by spring rains, boulders tumbled from the bluffs. A million times, and a million times a million, the smaller fragments of the glacial till somersaulted along the ocean floor. Pulled by winds and pushed by currents, they were swept out to sea and tossed back to shore. Rocks rubbed against each other. Stones clattered over the surface of the boulders at high tide. Filing, scraping, polishing rough edges, the endless motion of the waves turned the coarse gravel into smooth pebbles and the pebbles into sand.

Over the centuries, the restless ocean laid down a broad border of sand around the Outer Lands. It shaped harbors and bays, carved inlets-and then proceeded to rearrange them. Borrowing newly made sand from the beaches, the waves built bars and shoals offshore. The bars became spits and the spits, peninsulas. The shoals grew into islands and the islands joined to form long barrier beaches. A barrier beach is exactly what its name implies. A narrow strip of sand running parallel to the shore, it acts as a barrier to the ocean. Protecting the land in front of it, it transforms open harbors into sheltered bays.

A glance at a map of the Outer Lands will show the work of the sea. *** Along Long Island's south shore from Coney Island to Southampton the waves have thrown up almost a hundred miles of barrier beaches. Fire Island, Rockaway Beach, Jones Beach-these are all new lands formed since the Ice Age.