My Object Was To Get Information About The
Upper St. Mary's River, From Which I Proposed
To Make A Portage Of Thirty-Five Or Forty Miles In
A Westerly Direction To The Suwanee River,
Upon Arriving At Which I Would Descend To The
Gulf Of Mexico.
My efforts, both at St. Mary's
and Fernandina, on the Florida side of
Cumberland Sound, to obtain any reliable information
upon this matter, were unsuccessful.
A
settlement at Trader's Hill, about seventy-five miles
up the St. Mary's River, was the geographical
limit of local knowledge, while I wished to
ascend the river at least one hundred miles
beyond that point.
Believing that if I explored the uninhabited
sources of the St. Mary's, I should be compelled
to return without finding any settler upon its
banks at the proper point of departure for a
portage to the Suwanee, it became necessary to
abandon all idea of ascending this river. I could
not, however, give up the exploration of the
route. In this dilemma, a kindly written letter
seemed to solve the difficulties. Messrs. Dutton
& Rixford, northern gentlemen, who possessed
large facilities for the manufacture of resin and
turpentine at their new settlements of Dutton,
six miles from the St. Mary's River, and at
Rixford, near the Suwanee, kindly proposed that I
should take my canoe by railroad from
Cumberland Sound to Dutton. From that station Mr.
Dutton offered to transport the boat through the
wilderness to the St. Mary's River, which could
be from that point easily descended to the sea.
The Suwanee River, at Rixford, could be
reached by rail, and the voyage would end at
its debouchure on the marshy coast of the Gulf
of Mexico.
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