VIEW ON THE NAVIGABLE PART OF THE ZAMBESI.
"Livingstone's memory will always be preserved in connection with the exploration of the Zambesi, and the discovery of the great cataract of Mosi-oa-tunya, better known as the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi, though the former name is to be preferred.
"He discovered the falls in 1855, on his first ascent of the valley of the Zambesi, and the account he gave was so startling that he was thought to be wandering from the truth. In his second journey, five years later, he made a detailed examination of the cataract, making careful measurements of the heights and distances, so that there could be no mistake. If you look at his book and compare the measurements with those of Niagara, you can hardly fail to be astonished."
Fred went below to find the volume in question, and soon returned with it. From Dr. Livingstone's description of the great Falls of the Zambesi he read the following:
"On the 9th of August, 1860, we proceeded to see the Victoria Falls. Mosi-oa-tunya is the native name, and means smoke-sounding. Seongo, or Chongwe, meaning the rainbow, or the place of the rainbow, was the more ancient term they bore. We embarked in canoes belonging to Tuba Mokoro (smasher of canoes)—an ominous name; but he alone, it seems, knew the medicine which insures one against shipwreck in the rapids above the falls. For some miles the river was smooth and tranquil, and we glided pleasantly over water as clear as crystal, and past lovely islands, densely covered with a tropical vegetation. But our attention was quickly called from the charming islands to the dangerous rapids, down which Tuba might unintentionally shoot us. To confess the truth, the very ugly aspect of these roaring rapids could scarcely fail to cause some uneasiness in the minds of new-comers. It is only when the river is very low, as it was now, that any one durst venture to the island to which we were bound. If one went during the period of flood, and fortunately hit the island, he would be compelled to remain there till the water subsided again, if he lived so long. Both hippopotami and elephants have been known to be swept over the falls, and of course smashed to pulp.
"After many narrow escapes from being dashed on the rocks we landed at the head of Garden Island, which is situated near the middle of the river, and on the lip of the falls.
THE GREAT FALLS OF MOSI-OA-TUNYA.
"On reaching that lip, and peering over the giddy height, the wondrous and unique character of the magnificent cascade at once burst upon us. It is rather a hopeless task to endeavor to convey an idea of it in words, since, as was remarked on the spot, an accomplished painter, even by a number of views, could but impart a faint impression of the glorious scene. The probable mode of its formation may perhaps help to the conception of its peculiar shape. Niagara has been formed by a wearing back of the rock over which the river falls; and, during a long course of ages, it has gradually receded, and left a broad, deep, and pretty straight trough in front. It goes on wearing back daily, and may yet discharge the lakes from which its river flows. But the Victoria Falls have been formed by a crack right across the river in the hard, black, basaltic rock which there formed the bed of the Zambesi. The lips of the crack are still quite sharp, save about three feet of the edge over which the river rolls. The walls go sheer down from the lips without any projecting crag, or symptom of stratification or dislocation. When the mighty rift occurred no change of level took place in the two parts of the bed of the river thus rent asunder; consequently, in coming down the river to Garden Island the water suddenly disappears, and we see the opposite side of the cleft, with grass and trees growing where once the river ran, on the same level as that part of its bed on which we sail.
"The first crack is, in length, a few yards more than the breadth of the Zambesi, which by measurement we found to be a little over eighteen hundred and sixty yards, but this number we resolved to retain, as indicating the year in which the fall was for the first time carefully examined. The main stream here runs nearly north and south, and the cleft across it is nearly east and west. The depth of the rift was measured by lowering a line, to the end of which a few bullets and a foot of white cotton cloth were tied. One of us lay with his head over a projecting crag, and watched the descending calico, till, after his companions had paid out three hundred and ten feet, the weight rested on a sloping projection, probably fifty feet from the water below, the actual bottom being still farther down. The white cloth now appeared the size of a crown-piece. On measuring the width of this deep cleft by sextant it was found, at Garden Island, its narrowest part, to be eighty yards, and at its broadest somewhat more. Into this chasm, of twice the depth of Niagara Falls, the river, a full mile wide, rolls with a deafening roar; and this is Mosi-oa-tunya, or the Victoria Falls.
"Looking from Garden Island down to the bottom of the abyss, nearly half a mile of water, which has fallen over that portion of the falls to our right, or west of our point of view, is seen collected in a narrow channel twenty or thirty yards wide, and flowing at exactly right angles to its previous course, to our left; while the other half, or that which fell over the eastern portion of the falls, is seen in the left of the narrow channel below, coming toward our right. Both waters unite midway, in a fearful boiling whirlpool, and find an outlet by a crack situated at right angles to the fissure of the falls. This outlet is about eleven hundred and seventy yards from the western end of the chasm, and some six hundred from its eastern end; the whirlpool is at its commencement. The Zambesi, now apparently not more than twenty or thirty yards wide, rushes and surges south through the narrow escape-channel for one hundred and thirty yards; then enters a second chasm, somewhat deeper, and nearly parallel with the first. Abandoning the bottom of the eastern half of this second chasm to the growth of large trees, it turns sharply off to the west, and forms a promontory, with the escape-channel at its point, of eleven hundred and seventy yards long, and four hundred and sixteen yards broad at the base. After reaching this base the river runs abruptly round the head of another promontory, and flows away to the east, in a third chasm; then glides round a third promontory, much narrower than the rest, and away back to the west, in a fourth chasm; and we could see in the distance that it appeared to round still another promontory, and bend once more in another chasm toward the east. In this gigantic zigzag, yet narrow, trough the rocks are all so sharply cut and angular, that the idea at once arises that the hard basaltic trap must have been riven into its present shape by a force acting from beneath, and that this probably took place when the ancient inland seas were let off by similar fissures nearer the ocean.
"The land beyond, or on the south of the falls, retains, as already remarked, the same level as before the rent was made. It is as if the trough below Niagara were bent right and left several times before it reached the railway bridge. The land in the supposed bends, being of the same height as that above the fall, would give standing-places, or points of view, of the same nature as that from the railway bridge; but the nearest would be only eighty yards, instead of two miles (the distance to the bridge), from the face of the cascade. The tops of the promontories are in general flat, smooth, and studded with trees. The first, with its base on the east, is at one place so narrow that it would be dangerous to walk to its extremity. On the second, however, we found a broad rhinoceros path and a hut; but, unless the builder were a hermit, with a pet rhinoceros, we cannot conceive what beast or man ever went there for. On reaching the apex of this second eastern promontory we saw the great river, of a deep sea-green color, now sorely compressed, gliding away at least four hundred feet below us.
"Garden Island, when the river is low, commands the best view of the Great Fall chasm, as also of the promontory opposite, with its grove of large evergreen trees, and brilliant rainbows of three-quarters of a circle, two, three, and sometimes even four in number, resting on the face of the vast perpendicular rock, down which tiny streams are always running, to be swept again back by the upward rushing vapor. But, as at Niagara one has to go over to the Canadian shore to see the chief wonder—the great Horseshoe Fall—so here we have to cross over to Moselekatse's side, to the promontory of evergreens, for the best view of the principal falls of Mosi-oa-tunya. Beginning, therefore, at the base of this promontory, and facing the cataract, at the west end of the chasm, there is, first, a fall of thirty-six yards in breadth, and of course, as they all are, upward of three hundred and ten feet in depth. Then Boaruka, a small island, intervenes, and next comes a great fall, with a breadth of five hundred and seventy-three yards; a projecting rock separates this from a second grand fall of three hundred and twenty-five yards broad—in all upward of nine hundred yards of perennial falls. Farther east stands Garden Island; then, as the river was at its lowest, came a good deal of the bare rock of its bed, with a score of narrow falls, which, at the time of flood, constitute one enormous cascade of nearly another half mile. Near the east end of the chasm are two larger falls, but they are nothing, at low-water, compared to those between the islands.
"The whole body of water rolls clear over, quite unbroken; but, after a descent of ten or more feet, the entire mass suddenly becomes like a huge sheet of driven snow. Pieces of water leap off it in the form of comets with tails streaming behind, till the whole snowy sheet becomes myriads of rushing, leaping, aqueous comets. This peculiarity was not observed by Charles Livingstone at Niagara, and here it happens possibly from the dryness of the atmosphere, or whatever the cause may be which makes every drop of Zambesi water appear to possess a sort of individuality. It runs off the ends of the paddles, and glides in beads along the smooth surface, like drops of quick-silver on a table. Here we see them in a conglomeration, each with a train of pure white vapor, racing down till lost in clouds of spray. A stone dropped in became less and less to the eye, and at last disappeared in the dense mist below.
"Charles Livingstone had seen Niagara, and gave Mosi-oa-tunya the palm, though now at the end of a drought, and the river at its very lowest. Many feel a disappointment on first seeing the great American falls, but Mosi-oa-tunya is so strange it must ever cause wonder. In the amount of water Niagara probably excels, though not during the months when the Zambesi is in flood. The vast body of water, separating in the comet-like forms described, necessarily encloses in its descent a large volume of air, which, forced into the cleft to an unknown depth, rebounds, and rushes up loaded with vapor, to form the three or even six columns, as if of steam, visible at the Batoka village, Moachemba, twenty-one miles distant. On attaining a height of two hundred, or at most three hundred, feet from the level of the river above the cascade this vapor becomes condensed into a perpetual shower of fine rain. Much of the spray, rising to the west of Garden Island, falls on the grove of evergreen trees opposite; and from their leaves heavy drops are forever falling, to form sundry little rills, which, in running down the steep face of rock, are blown off and turned back, or licked off their perpendicular bed up into the column from which they have just descended."
BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF MOSI-OA-TUNYA.