558 VICTORIA FALLS. 



magnificent river, the Leeambye, had "no connection with the 

 Zambesi, but flowed under the Kalahari Desert, and became lost ;" 

 and "that, as all the old maps asserted, the Zambesi took its rise 

 in the very hills to which we have now come." This modest asser- 

 tion smacks exactly as if a native of Timbuctoo should declare that 

 the "Thames" and the "Pool" were different rivers, he having seen 

 neither the one nor the other. Leeambye and Zambesi mean the 

 very same thing, viz., the River. 



Sekeletu intended to accompany me, but, one canoe only having 

 come instead of the two he had ordered, he resigned it to me. 

 After twenty minutes' sail from Kalai we came in sight, for the 

 first time, of the columns of vapor appropriately called "smoke," 

 rising at a distance of five or six miles, exactly as when large 

 tracts of grass are burned in Africa. Five columns now arose, 

 and, bending in the direction of the wind, they seemed placed 

 against a low ridge covered with trees ; the tops of the columns 

 at this distance appeared to mingle with the clouds. They were 

 white below, and higher up became dark, so as to simulate smoke 

 very closely. The whole scene was extremely beautiful ; the 

 banks and islands dotted over the river are adorned with sylvan 

 vegetation of great variety of color and form. At the period of our 

 visit several trees were spangled over with blossoms. Trees have 

 each their own physiognomy. There, towering over all, stands 

 the great burly baobab, each of whose enormous arms would form 

 the trunk of a large tree, beside groups of graceful palms, which, 

 with their feathery-shaped leaves depicted on the sky, lend their 

 beauty to the scene. As a hieroglyphic they always mean "far 

 from home," for one can never get over their foreign air in a pic- 

 ture or landscape. The silvery mohonono, which in the tropics is 

 in form like the cedar of Lebanon, stands in pleasing contrast with 

 the dark color of the motsouri, whose cypress-form is dotted over 

 av present with its pleasant scarlet fruit. Some trees resemble the 

 great spreading oak, others assume the character of our own elms 

 and chestnuts ; but no one can imagine the beauty of the view 

 from any thing witnessed in England. It had never been seen 

 before by European eyes ; but scenes so lovely must have been 

 gazed upon by angels in their flight. The only want felt is that 

 of mountains in the background. The falls are bounded on three 

 sides by ridges 300 or 400 feet in height, which are covered with 



