204 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



Commander Bedingfield in the Congo or Zaire, that it, as well as the Orange 

 River, seems to be discharged by a fissure through the western ridge. The 

 breadth of the channel among the hills, where Captain Tuckey turned, will 

 scarcely account for the enormous body of water which appears farther down. 

 Indeed, no sounding can be taken with ordinary lines near the mouth, though 

 the water runs strong and is perfectly fresh. 



" On the day following my first visit I returned to take another glance 

 and make a little nursery garden on the island ; for I observed that it was 

 covered with trees, many of which I have seen nowhere else ; and as the wind 

 often wafted a little condensed vapour over the whole, it struck me this was 

 the very thing I could never get my Makololo friends to do. My trees have 

 always perished by being forgotten during droughts ; so I planted here a lot 

 of peach and apricot stones and coffee-seed. As th' 3 island is unapproachable 

 when the river rises, except by hippopotami, if my hedge is made according 

 to contract, I have great hopes of Mosioatunya's ability as a nuseryman. On 

 another island close by, your address of 1852 remained a whole year. If you 

 had been a lawyer, instead of a geologist, your claims to the discovery would 

 have been strong, as ' a bit of your mind ' was within sight and sound of 

 the falls very long before the arrival of any European.* I thank you for 

 sending it." 



Mr. Chapman, who visited the falls several times, gives the following as 

 his impression on the second visit. His introduction to the falls at a distance 

 occurred under the following circumstances : — 



" When we halted for the night, under a gigantic tree by the path- 

 side, we had no idea that we were so near the falls, but as the boisterous 

 laughter and merry frolicking of our little Makalaka subsided, there gradually 

 arose in the air a murmuring, and at length a roaring sound, increasing as the 

 night advanced, and sounding like the dashing of a mighty surf upon a rock- 

 bound coast. So much does the sound resemble this, that a stranger, 

 unacquainted with the existence of a waterfall here, and unaware of his 

 distance from the sea, could not be persuaded to the contrary. It was one 

 everlasting roar, broken occasionally by the thundering, like successive 

 cannonading in the distance ; and thus it sounded all through the night. . » 



" I should remark that on sailing down the river, one ignorant of the 

 fact may approach to within a very few yards of the falls, without dreaming 

 of being on the verge of such a chasm, owing to the strange and mysterious 

 manner in which the whole stream, of nearly a mile in breadth, has 

 suddenly disappeared before the eyes, vanishing as if it had been swallowed 

 by the earth. In all falls that I have seen, a perspective view of the water 



* Sir Roderick's address was contained in the packages sent by Dr. Moffat from Hoselekatse's 

 country, all of which. Livingstone found carefully preserved on an island in the Zambesi on his return 

 from the west coast. 



