"Since my little paper canoe entered southern waters upon her geographical errand, -- from the capes of the Delaware to your beautiful St. Mary's, -- I have been deeply sensible of the value of Southern hospitality. The oystermen and fishermen living along the lonely beaches of the eastern shore of Maryland and Virginia; the surfmen and lighthouse keepers of Albemarle, Pamplico, and Core sounds, in North Carolina; the ground-nut planters who inhabit the uplands that skirt the network of creeks, marshes, ponds, and sounds from Bogue Inlet to Cape Fear; the piny-woods people, lumbermen, and turpentine distillers on the little bluffs that jut into the fastnesses of the great swamps of the crooked Waccamaw River; the representatives of the once powerful rice-planting aristocracy of the Santee and Peedee rivers; the colored men of the beautiful sea-islands along the coast of Georgia; The Floridians living between the St. Mary's River and the Suwanee -- the wild river of song; the islanders on the Gulf of Mexico where I terminated my long journey; -- all have contributed to make the 'Voyage of the Paper Canoe' a success." After returning from this paper-canoe voyage, the author embarked alone, December 2, 1875, in a cedar duck-boat twelve feet in length, from the head of the Ohio River, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and followed the Ohio and Mississippi rivers over two thousand miles to New Orleans, where he made a portage through that city eastwardly to Lake Pontchartrain, and rowed along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico six or seven hundred miles, to Cedar Keys, Florida, the terminus of his paper-canoe voyage. While on these two voyages, the author rowed over five thousand miles, meeting with but one accident, the overturning of his canoe in Delaware Bay. He returned to his home with his boats in good condition, and his note-books, charts, &c., in an excellent state of preservation. At the request of the "Board on behalf of the United States Executive Department" of the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, the paper canoe "Maria Theresa," and the cedar duck-boat "Centennial Republic," were deposited in the Smithsonian Department of the United States Government building, during the summer and fall of 1876. The maps, which show the route followed by the paper canoe, have been drawn and engraved by contract at the United States Coast Survey Bureau, and are on a scale of 1/1,500,000. As the work is based on the results of actual surveys, the maps may be considered, for their size, the most complete of the United States coast ever presented to the public. Much credit is due to Messrs. Waud and Merrill for the artistic results of their pencils, and to Messrs. John Andrew & Son for their skill in engraving the illustrations.