218 THE NIAGARA OF AFRICA. 



water rolls. In coming hither there is danger of being swept 

 by the island in either of the streams which rush along at its 

 sides, and the landing could hardly be effected except in very 

 low water, as was the case at the time of our visit. But even 

 on the island no one could possibly perceive where the vast body 

 of water went. It was only when I had succeeded in creeping 

 with awe to the very verge, and peered down into a large rent 

 which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zam- 

 besi, that I saw a stream a thousand yards broad leap down a 

 hundred feet and then become suddenly compressed into a space 

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

 made in hard basaltic rock, from the right to the left bank of the 

 Zambesi, and then prolonged from the left bank away through 

 thirty or forty miles of hills. In looking down into the fissure 

 on the rieht 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. From this cloud rushed up a great jet of vapor 

 exactly like steam, and it mounted two or three hundred feet ; there 

 condensing, it changed its hue to that of dark smoke, and came 

 back in a constant shower, which soon wetted us to the skin. 

 This shower falls chiefly on the opposite side of the fissure, and 

 a few yards back from the lip there stands a straight hedge of 

 evergreen trees, whose leaves are always wet. From their roots 

 a number of little rills run back into the gulf, but, as they flow 

 down the steep wall there, the column of vapor, in its ascent, 

 licks them up clean off the rock, and away they mount again. 

 They are constantly running down, but never reach the bottom. 

 " On the left of the island we see the water at the bottom, a 

 white rolling mass moving away to the prolongation of the fissure, 

 which branches off near the left bank of the river. A piece of 

 the rock has fallen off a spot on the left of the island, and juts 

 out from the water below, and from it I judged the distance 

 which the water falls to be one hundred feet. The walls of this 

 gigantic crack are perpendicular, and composed of one homo- 

 geneous mass of rock. The edge of that side over which the 

 water falls is worn off two or three feet, and pieces have fallen 

 away, so as to give it somewhat of a serrated appearance. That 

 over which the water does not fall is quite straight, except at 

 the left corner, where a rent appears, and a piece seems in- 



