Ghap. XXVI. VICTORIA FALLS. 519 



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 Ave have now come." This modest as- 

 sertion smacks exactly as if a native of Timbuctu should declare, 

 that the " Thames " and the " Pool " were different rivers, he 

 having seen neither the one nor the other. Leeambye and Zam- 

 besi 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 vapour, 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 hi 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 vegeta- 

 tion of great variety of colour and form. At the period of our 

 visit several trees were spangled over with blossoms. Trees have 

 each then* 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 colour of the motsouri, whose cypress-form is dotted over 

 at 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 anvtliing witnessed in England. It had never been seen 

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

 j^zed upon by angels in then flight. The only want felt, is 

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

 three sides by ridges 300 or 100 feet in height, which are covered 



