“The beauty of the lake must be sought along all its intricate borders, among its three hundred or more islands, and in boats upon its own bosom. This is the way to find the most delightful single pictures. This is the way to study at leisure landscapes which the swift steamer allows you to see but a moment. This is the way to find delicious “bits,” such as artists love for studies, of jutting rock, shaded beach, coy and curving nook, or limpid water prattling upon amethystine sand. At one point, perhaps, a group of graceful trees on one side, a grassy or tangled shore in front, and a rocky cape curving in from the other side, compose an effective foreground to a quiet bay with finely varied borders. What more charming than to sail slowly along and see the numerous islands and irregular shores change their positions and weave their singular combinations? If the shores of the Lake were lined with summer-houses, how might the charms of boating upon Winnipiseogee enrich our literature!”

“Our readers of course know what “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” says of the privilege and pleasure of boating. Ah, if “The Autocrat” would visit Winnipiseogee for a season, and cleave its glossy azure with his canoe, and tell us how mountain peaks and lake rhyme themselves in his imagination, — or what fancies visit him when he pauses at some rare scene, and the silver has dripped from his resting oar-blades, and the wrinkled curves from his prow have smoothed into calm, and headland, mountain chain, emerald fringes of an island shore, and the snowy islands of the overbrooding blue are repeated beneath him in the sleeping silver!” -Thomas Starr King, 1859

Canoeing was a very popular subject during the heyday of the postcard era. Below are many postcard views of canoeing on Lake Winnipesaukee, as well of some simple rowboats. Most of these are generic views that may have been used elsewhere.