THE RIVER ZAMBEZI 47 



the world, the Victoria Falls. The great river 

 now takes a north-easterly direction, and enters 

 the Portuguese Province of Mozambique at Zumbo, 

 the small settlement which marks its confluence 

 with the Loangwa or Aroangwa River, an important 

 waterway forming for many miles the Anglo- 

 Portuguese western boundary, and rising in the 

 northern portion of the Nyasaland Protectorate. 

 Broadly speaking, the waters of the River Zambezi 

 are mainly those drained from what we may call 

 for the sake of convenience the great central plain 

 of Africa, which at this point of the continent 

 stretches from the western shores of Lake Nyasa 

 to the confines of the Portuguese West African 

 Colony of Angola. Its most important tributaries 

 are, of course, the Aroangwa mentioned above, 

 and the Shire, draining Lake Nyasa, and flowing 

 through the Protectorate of that name, where its 

 waters are reinforced by the Ruo from the north- 

 eastward. 



Although, doubtless, the Zambezi may be re- 

 garded as a river of moderately slow and placid 

 current, flowing, so far as its course through the 

 Portuguese Province is concerned, through broad 

 wooded valleys and richly fertile plains, it is in- 

 evitable, when one comes to consider the singular 

 system of terraces whereby Africa ascends from 

 the low-lying malarious seaboard to the healthy 

 upland plateaux of Rhodesia, that many falls and 

 cataracts must arrest it in its course to the east- 

 ward, or assuredly the greater portion of the year 

 would find the bed of the river a mere dry, sandy 

 streak. Putting aside, therefore, the restraining* 



