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THE LONGEST RIVER IN THE WORLD[1]

By SIR WILLIAM E. GARSTIN, G.C.M.G.


Few, if any, of the earth's chief waterways have aroused such universal and sustained interest as has that great stream which, rising at the equator, flows due north, through thirty-one degrees of latitude, to the Mediterranean. Almost from the dawn of history, the Nile has formed the basis of endless conjecture, and the subject of many a myth. The earliest writers vied one with another in relating legends regarding its sources, the dwellers on its banks, and the countries through which it passed.

This is easy to understand. Those pioneers of civilization who settled in its northern valley, and who, by the help of its beneficent waters, converted the desert into an area unrivalled for its agricultural prosperity—thus amassing the wealth which enabled them to form a mighty Empire—were aware that this river had its beginning in a land far away to the south, barred to

  1. This title has been given advisedly. The Nile, in its course from the Ripon Falls to the sea, traverses a distance of some 8,400 miles. Treated as a single river, then, it stands first as regards length among the principal streams of the world, the Yang-tse-Kiang coming next with 3,300 miles. If, however, to the mileage of the main rivers be added that of their longest affluents, then the Mississippi, with its great tributary the Missouri, comes first, with a waterway of 4,100 miles, and the Nile— even taking into account the united lengths of the Victoria Lake and the Kagera River—only fills the second place, its total length not exceeding 3,900 miles.

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