s included the length of Sinepuxent
Bay, according to Coast Survey authority. From South Point to below
the middle of Chincoteague Island the bay is put down as "Assateague,"
though the oystermen do not call it by that name. The celebrated
oyster-beds of the people of Chincoteague commence about twenty miles
south of the Hommack. There are two kinds of oysters shipped from
Chincoteague Inlet to New York and other markets. One is the long
native plant; the other, that transplanted from Chesapeake Bay: this
bivalve is rounded in form, and the most prized of the two. The
average width of Sinepuxent was only a mile. When I turned westwardly
around South Point, and entered Assateague Bay, the watery expanse
widened, between the marshes on the west and the sandy-beach island
on the east, to over four miles.

The debouchure of Newport Creek is to the west of South Point. The
marshes here are very wide. I ascended it in the afternoon to visit
Dr. F. J. Purnell, whose attempts to introduce the pinnated grouse
and California partridges on his plantation had attracted the
attention of Mr. Charles Hallock, editor of "Forest and Stream";
and I had promised him, if possible, to investigate the matter.
This South Point of Sinepuxent Neck is a place of historical
interest, it being now asserted that it is the burial-place of
Edward Whalley, the regicide.

Early in 1875, Mr. Robert P. Robins found in a bundle of old family
documents a paper containing interesting statements written by his
great-great-grandfather, Thomas Robins, 3d, of South Point, Worcester
County, Maryland, and dated July 8, 1769. We gather from this reliable
source that Edward Whalley left Connecticut and arrived in Virginia in
16--, and was there met by a portion of his family. From Virginia he
travelled to the "province of Maryland, and settled first at ye mouth
of ye Pokemoke River; and finding yt too publick a place he came to
Sinepuxent, a neck of land open to ye Atlantic Ocean, where Colonel
Stephen was surveying and bought a tract of land from him and called it
Genezar; it contained two thousand two hundred acres, south end of
Sinepuxent; and made a settlement on ye southern extremity, and called
it South Point; to ye which place he brought his family about 1687, in
ye name of Edward Middleton. His own name he made not publick until
after this date, after ye revolution in England, (in ye year of our
Lord 1688,) when he let his name be seen in publick papers,