The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas

“The facts of this country are all so recent, and so famil iar, that every innovation on them, by means of the imagi nation, is coldly received, if it be not absolutely frowned upon. Perhaps it would have been safer to have written a work of this character without a reference to any particular locality. The few local allusions that are introduced are not essential to the plot, and might have been dispensed with without lessening the interest of the tale.”