Thanks for the great advice
I added two red lines to the map, the shorter one represents 1000 kilometers, and the longer one 5000 kilometers. So yes, the continent is pretty massive.
The point you made about there being an upper limit on how far water will travel from the ocean worries me. The great river which travel from the great northern forest all the way through the continent and into the southern sea (which is kind of like the Mediterranean) is one of the most important trade routes on the whole continent, so I can't really change the course of the river, even if the river turns out to be unrealistically long.
Basically all the lands west of the river (the area marked "A") are relatively dry anyway, they are grasslands where mongolian style tribal nomads herd their livestock, and the place looks basically like something between the American prairie and the Mongolian steppe. So even if the central part of the continent (the area marked "B") is really dry to the point of being a desert or very arid steppe, it kind of suits the general climate of the place and its cultures.
What I'm concerned about is whether or not that dry climate affects my precious river. Will the ground be so overly dry that it will hungrily absorb all the river's water, or will the river be unaffected by its dry surroundings. I admit it does feel a bit weird if a huge river as wide as the Mississippi will happily flow through a desert, but maybe it does happen. And if the river really can flow through an extreme arid steppe or even a desert, I'd assume the muddy riverbanks could support all kinds of plant life, so despite the dry surroundings plants, animals and people would presumably gather near the river since it would the only place for hundreds of kilometers around which could actually properly support life.
And if the unfortunate fact about there being a limit on how far water will travel from the ocean would also make my river impossible, how could I fix the situation? Would I need to ad a shallow interior sea or a massive lake to provide moisture (though where would that sea or lake get its water from?), or could rainclouds reach from the southern (Mediterranean type) sea to the north and bring rain to the central parts of the continent?
So as long as the Great river follows roughly the course it does now, everything's fine. And if the massive size of the continent makes it impossible for the river flow that way, I will just need to add more sources of moisture or whatever is needed to make the river plausible
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