If one requires that a true “continental divide” be between oceans, and if one considers the only “oceans” to be the traditinal ones of Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, and Indian, then:
North America has divides between the basins draining into the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic
South America - Atlantic and Pacific
Africa - Atlantic and Indian
Australia - Pacific and Indian
Eurasia - all four
Wouldn’t Eurasia have a section that also drains into the Caspian Sea? Since the Volga flows into the Caspian, it would be a fairly large part of Russia.
Right you are, Colibri. My theoretical scenario was more in response to HeyHomie’s inclusion of “North to South” in his definition. The Eurasian continental watershed accumulating waters south of the Himilayas to the Indian Ocean (among others) appears to trend in much more of an East to West fashion.
The Continental Breakfast Divide is obviously the line that separates the two parts of North America: one, where grits are eaten; the other, where grits are considered runny disgusting mush.
Yes, and the Aral Sea and Dead Sea basins also have internal drainage. Likewise there are internal drainage basins in North America, in particular the Great Basin, and in Australia. (There are also some much smaller basins of this kind in Africa and South America.)
Some of these basins, like the Great Divide Basin in Wyoming, are actually on the continental divide and could be considered a part of it. Others, however, like the Great Basin, are entirely on one side of the main continental divide.
Note that divides are not necessarily mountain ranges. You can, for instance, define a divide between the Missourissippi River drainage and the Great Lakes drainage. In Ohio, this divide is a shallow ridge of hills, and in Illinois, it’s almost completely flat (there’s a canal from Chicago to the Missourissippi, and I don’t think it even needs any locks).
Incidentally, it’s hard to tell where the divide is, when you’re on it. You need to know the entire lay of the land, all the way to the ocean, to know where the divide is. The western border of Montana with Idaho, for instance, was originally supposed to follow the Continental Divide, and it does at first. But about a third of the way up the border, the surveyors started following the wrong range. A little short of the Canadian border, they happened upon a river flowing across their path, and realized that they weren’t on the divide any more (since a river can’t cross a divide). Rather than retracing their steps and trying to figure out where they went wrong, they just said “to heck with it”, and went straight north from there.
I wonder if the lead surveyor was more interested in drawing a self-portait as his legacy? 
Or perhaps Montana’s western “nose” was the “heck with it” point?
There are a few holes in the continental divide. See Two Ocean Creek
I took a red marker and drew out these water divides on all continents but Antarctica.
EUROPE
(Northern Europe)
North Sea/Skagerrak; Arctic Ocean; White Sea; Gulf of Finland; Baltic Sea; Elbe; Oder; Vistula; Weser; Kattegat/Baltic
(Western Europe)
Coastal; Seine; Loire; Dordogne/Garonne; Douro; Tagus; Guadalquivir; Júcar; Ebro
(Southern Europe)
Rhône; Tiber; Tyrrehnian Sea; Adriatic Sea; Po; Aegean Sea; Danube
ASIA
(Western Asia)
Black Sea; Volga-Capsian Sea; Aral Sea; Tigris-Euphrates; Dead Sea; Arabian Peninsula; Coastal
(Northern Asia)
White Sea-Barents Sea; Ob’-Irtysh; Yenisey; Lena; Sea of Okhotsk; Amur
(Central Asia)
Tibet Plateau; Gobi Desert; Yellow Sea; Huang Ho; Yangtze
(Southern Asia)
Indus; India Coastal West; India Coastal East; Ganges-Brahmaputra; Irrawaddy; Mekong
AUSTRALIA
North Coastal; Gulf of Carpentaria; East Coastal; South Coastal; West Coastal; Darling; Desert (includes Lake Eyre)
AFRICA
Coastal; Sahara Desert; Nile; Niger; Congo; Zambezi; Orange; Kalahari Desert
SOUTH AMERICA
North Coastal (Caribbean); Pacific Coastal; Atlantic Coastal; Amazon; Río de la Plata
I know I misspelled “Caspian Sea.” :o
And here are the basins in North America:
Mississippi-Missouri
Columbia
Colorado
Pacific Coastal
Atlantic Coastal
Gulf
Rio Grande
Great Lakes-St. Lawrence
Arctic Coastal
MacKenzie
Yukon
Hudson Bay
There is a point just outside of Chicago–a short distance from Lake Michigan–to which the Mississippi River basin extends. It also passes very close to Buffalo, NY, and Lake Ontario. In Western Minnesota the Divide runs between the Red River and the Minnesota, in Big Stone County.
And, of course, the Great Basin. :o It runs within 50 miles of the Pacific in L. A. County.
And, of course, anything that drains into the Great Salt Lake doesn’t go into either ocean, so that’s its own little drainage basin, too.
I am currently located a couple blocks from the eastern cont. divide (or “little continental divide” on some maps). That particular area is quite flat. I am maybe 6 feet lower than the “peak”. So the little stream that runs by the house just starts a short ways away in a manmade pond. Picking a random stream in the area and using a map to determine which side it drains into is not at all easy. My stream goes thru about a dozen other creeks, rivers, etc. to get to the sea.
It is interesting to note that people view the Great Basin as a single drainage, when in fact it consists of quite a few sep. drainages. There’s a lot of salt lakes and such in the region. All they have in common is that they don’t drain into the ocean and that they abut one another.
And it’s also a good thing they don’t drain into each other! Lake Tahoe is in the Great Basin, same as the Great Salt Lake and the Humboldt River (Which Cecil himself mentioned), but it isn’t salty like the Great Salt Lake and Salton Sea. And the Sea of Galilee drains into the Dead Sea, via the Jordan River; likewise the Sea of Galilee is, I assume, not salty either.
There’s also the Great Divide Basin in Sweetwater County in southwestern Wyoming, with at least one little lake in it…
In the list for Europe I omitted the basin of one of THE major rivers on the continent–The Rhine!! :o
The Teeming European Millions have every right to flame me over this… [
to me]