The Largest Craft Can
Ascend It To Quebec, And Smaller Ones To
Montreal; Above Which City, Navigation Being
Impeded By Rapids, The Seven Canals Before
Mentioned Have Been Constructed That Vessels May
Avoid This Danger While Voyaging To Lake Ontario.
The southern and shorter coast route to the
gulf leaves the great river at the Acadian town
of Sorel, where the quiet Richelieu flows into
the St. Lawrence River.
Of the two long routes
offered me I selected the southern, leaving the
other to be traversed at some future time. To
follow the contours of rivers, bays, and sounds,
a voyage of at least twenty-five hundred miles
was before me. It was my intention to explore
the connecting watercourses southward, without
making a single portage, as far as Cape
Henlopen, a sandy headland at the entrance of
Delaware Bay; there, by making short portages from
one watercourse to another, to navigate along
the interior of the Atlantic coast to the St. Mary's
River, which is a dividing line between Georgia
and Florida. From the Atlantic coast of
southern Georgia, I proposed to cross the peninsula
of Florida by way of the St. Mary's River, to
Okefenokee Swamp; thence, by portage, to the
Suwanee River, and by descending that stream
(the boundary line of a geographical division -
eastern and middle Florida), to reach the coast
of the Gulf of Mexico, which was to be the
terminal point of my canoe journey. Charts, maps
and sea-faring men had informed me that about
twenty-three hundred miles of the trip could be
made upon land-locked waters, but about two
hundred miles of voyaging must be done upon
the open Atlantic Ocean.
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