Note 632 — Chapter XI · —The Anthropo-Geography Of Rivers

The transitional form between stream and pelagic inlet found in every river mouth is emphasized where strong tidal currents carry the sea far into these channels of the land. The tides move up the St. Lawrence River 430 miles (700 kilometers) or half way between Montreal and Quebec, and up the Amazon 600 miles (1,000 kilometers). Owing to their resemblance to pelagic channels, the estuaries of the American rivers with their salty tide were repeatedly mistaken, in the period of discoveries, for the Northwest Passage to the Pacific. Newport in 1608 explored the broad sluggish course of the James River in his search for a western ocean. Henry Hudson ascended the Hudson River almost as far as Albany, before he discovered that this was no maritime pathway, like the Bosporus or Dardanelles, leading to an ulterior sea. The long tidal course of the St. Lawrence westward into the heart of the continent fed La Salle's dream of finding here a water route to the Pacific, and fixed his village of "La Chine" above the rapids at Montreal as a signpost pointing the way to the Indies and Cathay. In the same way a tidal river at the head of Cook's Inlet on the Alaskan coast was mistaken for a Northeast Passage, not by Captain Cook but by his fellow officers, on his Pacific voyage of 1776-1780; and it was followed for several days before its character as a river was established.632