CHAP. VII. M0SI-0A-TUNYA EXCELS NIAGARA. 



and glides in beads along the smooth surface, like drops 

 of quicksilver on a table. Here we see them in a con- 

 glomeration, each with a train of pure white vapour, racing 

 down till lost in clouds of spray. A stone dropped in 

 became less and less to the eye, and at last disappeared 

 in the dense mist below. 



Charles Livingstone had seen Niagara, and gave Mosi- 

 oa-tunya the palm, though now at the end of a drought, and 

 the river at its very lowest. Many feel a disappointment 

 on first seeing the great American Falls, but Mosi-oa-tunya 

 is so strange, it must ever cause wonder. In the amount 

 of water, Niagara probably excels, though not during the 

 months when the Zambesi is in flood. The vast body of 

 water, separating in the comet-like forms described, neces- 

 sarily encloses in its descent a large volume of air, which, 

 forced into the cleft, to an unknown depth, rebounds, and 

 rushes up loaded with vapour to form the three or even 

 six columns, as if of steam, visible at the Batoka village 

 Moachemba, twenty-one miles distant. On attaining a 

 height of 200, or at most 300 feet from the level of the 

 river above the cascade, this vapour becomes condensed • 

 into a perpetual shower of fine rain. Much of the spray, 

 rising to the west of Garden Island, falls on the grove of 

 evergreen trees opposite; and from their leaves, heavy 

 drops are for ever falling, to form sundry little rills, which. 

 in running down the steep face of rock, are blown off and 

 turned back, or licked off their perpendicular bed, up into 

 the column from which they have just descended. 



The morning sun gilds these columns of watery smoke 

 with all the glowing colours of double or treble rainbows. 

 The evening sun, from a hot yellow sky, imparts a sul- 

 phureous hue, and gives one the impression that the yawn- 

 ing gulf might resemble the mouth of the bottomless pit. 

 Xo bird sits and sings on the branches of the grove of 

 perpetual showers, or ever builds its nest there. We Baw 



