By writer and adventurer Nathaniel Holmes Bishop, “Voyage of the Paper Canoe” is an account of the author’s journey in his canoe “Maria Therese” in 1874–1875. It was his intention to follow the natural and artificial connecting watercourses of the continent in the most direct line southward to the gulf coast of Florida, making portages as seldom as possible, to show how few were the interruptions to a continuous water-way for vessels of light draught, from the chilly, foggy, and rocky regions of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the north, to the semi-tropical waters of the great Southern Sea, the waves of which beat upon the sandy shores of the southernmost
United States. Having proceeded about four hundred miles upon his voyage, the author reached
Troy, on the Hudson River, New York State, where for several years E. Waters & Sons had been perfecting the construction of paper boats.