520 VICTORIA FALLS. Chap. XXVI. 



with forest, with the red soil appearing among the trees. When 

 about half a mile from the falls, I left the canoe by which we had 

 come down thus far, and embarked in a lighter one, with men well 

 acquainted with the rapids, who, by passing down the centre of 

 the stream in the eddies and still places caused by many jutting 

 rocks, brought me to an island situated in the middle of the river, 

 and on the edge of the lip over which the water rolls. In coming 

 hither, there was danger of being swept down by the streams 

 which rushed along on each side of the island ; but the river was 

 now low, and we sailed where it is totally impossible to go when 

 the water is high. But though we had reached the island, and 

 were within a few yards of the spot, a view from winch would solve 

 the whole problem, I believe that no one could perceive where 

 the vast body of water went ; it seemed to lose itself in the 

 earth, the opposite lip of the fissure into which it disappeared, 

 being only 80 feet distant. At least I did not comprehend it until, 

 creeping with awe to the verge, I peered down into a large rent 

 which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambesi, 

 and saw that a stream of a thousand yards broad, leaped down a 

 hundred feet, and then became suddenly compressed into a space of 

 fifteen or twenty yards. The entire falls are simply a crack made 

 in a hard basaltic rock from the right to the left bank of the Zam- 

 besi, and then prolonged from the left bank away through thirty or 

 forty miles of lulls. If one imagines the Thames filled with low 

 tree-covered hills immediately beyond the tunnel, extending as far 

 as Gravesend ; the bed of black basaltic rock instead of London 

 mud ; and a fissure made therein from one end of the tunnel to the 

 other, down through the keystones of the arch, and prolonged 

 from the left end of the tunnel through thirty miles of hills ; the 

 pathway being 100 feet down from the bed of the river instead of 

 what it is, with the lips of the fissure from 80 to 100 feet apart ; 

 then fancy the Thames leaping bodily into the gulf; and forced 

 there to change its direction, and flow from the right to the left 

 bank ; and then rush boiling and roaring through the hills, — he may 

 have some idea of what takes place at this, the most wonderful 

 sight I had witnessed in Africa. In looking down into the fissure on 

 the right of the island, one sees nothing but a dense white cloud, 

 which, at the time we visited the spot, had two bright rainbows on 

 it. (The sun was on the meridian, and the declination about equal 



