1854-56.] FROM LO AND A TO QUILIMANE. 179 



of terrible necessity in our Caffre wars as the American 

 Professor of Chemistry said he was under, when he 

 dismembered the man whom he had murdered." 



Again Livingstone sets out on his weary way, un- 

 trodden by white man's foot, to pass through unknown 

 tribes, whose savage temper might give him his quietus at 

 any turn of the road. There were various routes to the 

 sea open to him. He chose the route along the Zambesi 

 — though the most difficult, and through hostile tribes — 

 because it seemed the most likely to answer his desire to 

 find a commercial highway to the coast. Not far to the east 

 of Linyanti, he beheld for the first time those wonderful 

 falls of which he had only heard before, giving an English 

 name to them — the first he had ever given in all his 

 African journeys, — the Victoria Falls. We have seen 

 how genuine his respect was for his Sovereign, and it was 

 doubtless a real though quiet pleasure to connect her 

 name with the grandest natural phenomenon in Africa. 

 This is one of the discoveries 1 that have taken most hold 

 on the popular imagination, for the Victoria Falls are like 

 a second Niagara, but grander and more astonishing ; 

 but except as illustrating his views of the structure of 

 Africa, and the distribution of its waters, it had not 

 much influence, and led to no very remarkable results. 

 Right across the channel of the river was a deep fissure 

 only eighty feet wide, into which the whole volume of 

 the river, a thousand yards broad, tumbled to the depth 

 of a hundred feet, 2 the fissure being continued in zigzag 

 form for thirty miles, so that the stream had to change 

 its course from right to left and left to right, and went 

 through the hills boiling and roaring, sending up columns 

 of steam, formed by the compression of the water falling 

 into its narrow wedge-shaped receptacle. 



A discovery as to the structure of the country, long 



1 Virtually a discovery, though marked in an old map. 



2 Afterwards ascertained by him to be 1800 yards and 320 feet respectively. 



