Great Rivers of the World “N...-”
for social studies and science educators and home schoolers.

The Neva River in northwestern Russia flows from Lake Ladoga through the western part of Leningrad Oblast to the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland.

The city of Saint Petersburg in on the Neva River, to the south of the Karelian Isthmus.

Niger River, the 3rd longest river in Africa (2600 miles or 4180 km), is the principal river of western Africa. The Niger extends through Guinea, Mali, Niger, is part of the border with Benin, then through Nigeria, and discharges through the massive Niger Delta into the Gulf of Guinea (Atlantic Ocean).

Cities along the Niger River include Bamako, Timbuktu, and Lagos.

The explorer Mungo Park was the first Westerner to encounter the Niger River.

FYI - the Niger Delta area was also known as the Oil Rivers because of the cultivation of oil palm tree, the source of an edible oil that was also an important component in personal care products (Palmolive soap) and industrial lubricant in the Industrial Revolution. Today the Niger River Delta is the site of 75% of Nigeria's petroleum production, Africa's largest producer.

• Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environemt of the Niger Delta

The Nile River is generally considered the longest river in the world (6,695 km or 4,180 mi), flowing northward from east central Africa to its delta in the Mediterrean Sea.

Seasonal floodng over hundreds of thousands of years deposited a thick layer of rich fertile silt which made the ancient Egyptian culture ‘the gift of the Nile’ according to the historian Herodotus.

Quotes about the Nile ~
• “How doth the little crocodile / Improve his shining tail, / And pour the waters of the Nile,/ On every golden scale!” ~ Lewis Carroll
• “He who rides the sea of the Nile must have sails woven of patience.” ~ William Golding
• “Son of the old moon-mountains African!/ Stream of the Pyramid and Crocodile!/We call thee fruitful, and that very while/A desert fills our seeing's inward span.” ~ John Keats
• “The Nile, forever new and old,/Among the living and the dead,/Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• “The higher Nilus swells/The more it promises; as it ebbs, the seedsman/Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain,/And shortly comes the harvest.” ~ William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra