Beadle's New Dime Novels, No. 49 — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THORNPATH, THE TRAILER, , THE PERILS OF THE PRAIRIE. CHAPTER I. THE BESIEGED HUNTERS. Our story opens in the year 1820, at a point on the Des Moines river, some thirty miles below the mouth of the Rac- - coon. ‘The sun had long since gone down in a sheen of purple and gold, and the queenly moon, with her host of starry cour- | tiers, drifted slowly up the eastern slope, throwing a pale, melancholy light over the great prairies, the dark, green wood- land, the silent rivers, the silvery lakes, the rippling brooks and the singing cascades. A soft breeze, laden with the perfume of wild flowers, floated over the wide expanse, fan- ning the tall, green grass into gentle billows, rustling the green robes of the forest trees, whispering among the boughs, sighing in the valleys. And, too, out upon its airy wings floated the soft, dulcet, weird-like strains of music, which, as it came over the water from the little island in the river, fell upon your ears with a wild, strange melody; yet there was naught in its enchanting strains to charm the heart of those dusky, phantom-like figures that with stolid faces and crouching Zorms glide hither and thither, their eyes ever fixed upon the little island. It was not that such music never before had been heard that gave it such wild molody, but that the slumbering echoes of this place never before had been awak- ened by aught save the savage war-whoop, death-song and sealp-ery; or the scream of some startled bird or the howl- ‘ing of wild beasts. But that we may fully understand the origin of the strange - Musie, we will cross over to the island whence it emanates COmcbooks.con . . , < gee .