Map titled Le Rhin de Mayence a Coblenz, overall size is approx. 35.5 x 27 cm, image size is approx. 28 x 18.5 cm, fold as issued. From La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes, 19 vol., 1875-94 (In English: The Earth and Its Inhabitants, 1878-94), great work of Elisee Reclus.

Rhine River

German Rhein , French Rhin , Dutch Rijn , Celtic Renos , Latin  Rhenus

river and waterway of western Europe, culturally and historically one of the  great rivers of the continent and among the most important arteries of  industrial transport in the world. It flows from two small headways in the Alps  of east-central Switzerland north and west to the North Sea, into which it  drains through the Netherlands. The length of the Rhine was long given as 820  miles (1,320 km), but in 2010 a shorter distance of about 765 miles (1,230 km)  was proposed. An international waterway since the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, it  is navigable overall for some 540 miles, as far as Rheinfelden on the  Swiss-German border. Its catchment area, including the delta area, exceeds  85,000 square miles (220,000 square km).

The Rhine has been a classic example of the alternating roles of great rivers as  arteries of political and cultural unification and as political and cultural  boundary lines. The river also has been enshrined in the literature of its  lands, especially of Germany, as in the famous epic Nibelungenlied. Since the  time when the Rhine valley became incorporated into the Roman Empire, the river  has been one of Europe's leading transport routes. Until the 19th century the  goods transported were of high value but relatively small in volume, but since  the second half of the 19th century the volume of goods conveyed on the river  has increased greatly. The fact that cheap water transport on the Rhine helped  to keep prices of raw materials down was the main reason the river became a  major axis of industrial production: one-fifth of the world's chemical  industries are now manufacturing along the Rhine. The river was long a source of  political dissension in Europe, but this has given way to international concern  for ecological safeguards as pollution levels have risen; some 6,000 toxic  substances have been identified in Rhine waters.

No other river in the world has so many old and famous cities on its  banks—Basel, Switz.; Strasbourg, France; and Worms, Mainz, and Cologne, Ger., to  name a few—but there are also such industrial cities as Ludwigshafen and  Leverkusen in Germany that pollute the waters and mar the scenic attraction of  the riverbanks. Nonetheless, the middle Rhine (the section between the German  cities of Bingen and Bonn), with such steep rock precipices as the Lorelei crag  and numerous castles, still presents breathtaking vistas and attracts tourists.  This is the Rhine of legend and myth, where the medieval Mouse Tower (Mausturm)  lies at water level near Bingen and the castle of Kaub stands on an island in  the river. The Alpine section of the Rhine lies in Switzerland, and below Basel  the river forms the boundary between western Germany and France, as far  downstream as the Lauter River. It then flows through German territory as far as  Emmerich, below which its many-branched delta section epitomizes the landscapes  characteristic of the Netherlands.