undred square miles, which is the largest size, while others do
not contain more than a tenth of that surface.

The township in which the northern prong, or point of Long Island, lies,
is named Southold, and includes not only all of the long, low, narrow
land that then went by the common names of Oyster Pond, Sterling, &c., but
several islands, also, which stretch off in the Sound, as well as a
broader piece of territory, near Riverhead. Oyster Pond, which is the
portion of the township that lies on the 'point,' is, or _was_, for we
write of a remote period in the galloping history of the state, only a
part of Southold, and probably was not then a name known in the laws, at
all.

We have a wish, also, that this name should be pronounced properly. It is
not called Oyster _Pond_, as the uninitiated would be very apt to get it,
but _Oyster_ Pund, the last word having a sound similar to that of the
cockney's 'pound,' in his "two pund two." This discrepancy between the
spelling and the pronunciation of proper names is agreeable to us, for it
shows that a people are not put in leading strings by pedagogues, and that
they make use of their own, in their own way. We remember how great was
our satisfaction once, on entering Holmes' Hole, a well-known bay in this
very vicinity, in our youth, to hear a boatman call the port, 'Hum'ses
Hull.' It is getting to be so rare to meet with an American, below the
higher classes, who will consent to cast this species of veil before his
school-day acquisitions, that we acknowledge it gives us pleasure to hear
such good, homely, old-fashioned English as "Gar'ner's Island," "Hum'ses
Hull," and "Oyster Pund."

This plainness of speech was not the only proof of the simplicity of
former days that was to be found in Suffolk, in the first quarter of the
century. The eastern end of Long Island lies so much out of the track of
the rest of the world, that even the new railroad cannot make much
impression on its inhabitants, who get their pigs and poultry, butter and
eggs, a little earlier to market, than in the days of the stage-wagons, it
is true, but they fortunately, as yet, bring little back except it be the
dross that sets every thing in motion, whether it be by rail, or through
the sands, in the former toilsome mode.

The season, at the precise moment when we desire to take the reader with
us to Oyster Pond, was in the delightful month of September, when the
earlier promises of the year are fa