River

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A river is a wide, natural stream of water that flows through a very long ditch in the ground called the riverbed. The earth on each side is called a bank. Rivers begin at a spring, usually at a hill, mountain, or another high place. The river flows into a lake, another wider river, or an ocean. Water flows down because of gravity.

The place where the river flows into the larger body of water is called the "mouth" of the river. It is wide there, and sometimes forms a triangle filled with sand islands, called a delta.

While oceans have salt water, rivers have fresh water. For this reason, animals and plants need to live near rivers. People also like to live near rivers, because they can use boats to move large amounts of goods on the river, and for many other reasons.

A submarine river is a current that flows under the surface of an ocean. One of them, named the Cromwell current, was found in 1952. A subterranean river or crypto-river is a river which flows under the surface of the earth. One of them was found in August 1958 under the Nile.

Some of the longest rivers of the world are:

• the Amazon in South America. It is a very wide tropical river flowing through a jungle and into the Atlantic Ocean. Many types of fish live in it.
• the Nile in Africa. This river has always provided Egyptians with water to help their food grow. Cairo, the biggest city in Egypt and Africa, is built near the Nile's delta on the Mediterranean Sea.
• the Mississippi in the United States. This river was used by Americans in the 1800s to move around the eastern United States. The Mississippi flows through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.