Of the numerous affluents here the largest are the navigable Neckar and
the Main from the right, and the navigable Ill from the left. A little
below Mainz, the Rhine (six hundred and eighty-five yards wide) is
turned west by the Taunus range; but at Bingen it forces a passage
through, and pursues a northwesterly direction across Rhenish Prussia,
past Coblenz, Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Ruhrort, and Wesel as far as
the Dutch frontier; here it is one thousand and eighty-five yards wide
and thirty-six feet above sea-level.