From the exhibition
The Mystic Canoe
· October 7, 1884
This catalog description covers "The Mystic Canoe: A Romance of One Hundred Years Ago" by Edward S. Ellis, published by Beadle and Adams in 1865. The narrative follows Basil Veghte, a skilled frontier hunter on Lake Erie in the 1760s, as he watches for a mysterious canoe. Veghte spots a canoe piloted by Mariano, an Indian girl he loves but who rejected his marriage proposal months earlier. She departs daily from the shore and travels to a remote island cluster via hidden channels. Suspicious that the antagonist Horace Johnson pursues her, Veghte observes her from afar using a telescope, unable to follow further into the sacred islands without violating her privacy. The story combines frontier adventure with romantic tension, exploring themes of pursuit, unrequited affection, and the wilderness setting of early American frontier life.
Public domain (pre-1929), restored and presented by comicbooks.com public-domain