Rivers Of The World.

There are 188 rivers which are more than 1000km in the world, and countless shorter ones. The long rivers have common features, but they are all different. They start in mountains or high ground as mere streams, then widen with the tides like flared trousers, As they flow down to a wide delta at the ocean where they may divide, like the Ganges at Kolkota. The Ganges has many river mouths at the Bay of Bengal and is revered by the Hindu people who build funeral pyres on which people who have sailed to the end of their journey are cremated. The River Jordan, which is narrow and only 360 km, is, nevertheless, where John baptized the first Christians. The longest rivers do not generally go it alone; the Yangtze flowing west-east has more than seven hundred tributaries in east China. It widens to some km. acrossat the delta, with two islands, at Shanghai. The Mississippi-Missouri is a complex river system of north-south and south-north flow, which is joinedby hundreds of tributaries: the partners meet at St. Louis from which the Mississippi flows on south through Memphis, which is still haunted by the ghost of Elvis in town, to the delta at New Orleans, the bi-cultural city which had it all before the cyclone swirled around. -12,13 June 2020. Revised 19 June 2020.