The source of the Nile was discovered by Europeans in 1858 when British explorer John Hanning Speke reached Lake Victoria Nyanza, in what is now Burundi. About one hundred years later, in 1953, the source of the Amazon was identified as a stream called Huarco flowing from the Misuie glacier in the Peruvian Andes mountains.
By following the Amazon from its source and up the Rio Para, it is possible to sail for 6,750 km, which is slightly more than the length of the Nile. But geographers do not consider the entire route to be part of the Amazon basin, so the Nile is considered the world’s longest river.
1 Nile* flows through Burundi, Dem, Rep of Congo, Egypt , Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda –6,695 km
2 Amazon flows through Peru and Brazil –6,448 km
3 Chang Jiang (Yangtze) flows through China –6,378 km
4 Amur flows through China and Russia –4,415 km
* In 2006 the British and New Zealand Ascend the Nile team sailed from the mouth to the source of the river. Using Global Positioning, they measured their journey and came up with a total length 107 km (66.5 miles) longer than the official figure.
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