THE VICTORIA FALLS. 205 



below has always been visible, but there is nothing of the kind here. You see 

 land before you on your own level, which seems as if springing out of the 

 stream on which you are sailing, and proceed in utter unconsciousness of the 

 danger ahead, discovering at length that it is on the opposite side of the rent. 

 But for this circumstance, the Victoria Falls, presenting one unobstructed 

 view, would not alone have been the most magnificent, but the most 

 stupendous sight of the kind on the face of the globe." 



In another place he says : — 



" As I neared the falls from the north, the sound issuing from the crack 

 is more subdued ; the smoke during the heat of the day less ; but although 

 we can sometimes hardly hear the roaring of the water, though within half a 

 mile of it, we can feel very distinctly a quivering sensation in the earth, like 

 the distant rumbling of an earthquake. But the sound of the waters is very 

 different under the various circumstances in which it is heard, whether from a 

 height or from a valley ; wake up at any time during the night, and you may 

 hear it like the roaring of a mighty wind, or the commotion of a strong sea. 

 I have since heard it at the distance of fifteen miles on an elevated region in 

 the south. 



" There are a thousand beauties to be seen here which it is impossible to 

 describe. My senses became truly overwhelmed with crowding sensations 

 while gazing on these wondrous works of God, but I cannot describe them. 

 In passing, we again peep down into the depths of the yawning chasm at the 

 west end, belching forth its dense clouds of vapour, and follow with our eyes 

 through the blinding brilliancy of the rainbow the boiling, roaring, dashing, 

 splashing, gushing, gleaming, bounding stream, and exclaim, ' How beauti- 

 ful ! ' ' How terrible ! ' These rainbows, seen from a distance of about two 

 miles at 4 p.m., their depth being then very much enlarged on the rising spray, 

 impart a most startling effect. On observing it for the first time from this 

 point, it looked so much like sulphurous fire issuing from the bowels of the 

 earth, that I was on the point of exclaiming to my companion, " Look at that 

 fire.' The many streams of vapour flying fast upwards through the broad 

 and vivid iris of the rainbows looked so like flames, that even I was for the 

 moment mistaken. We passed the Three Rill Cliff, and came again to the 

 first extensive fall of water. Here the stream, pouring over the edge of the 

 precipice, tumbles like gigantic folds of drapery. I have never seen anything 

 with which I can compare it. Here green, there convolute streams pour 

 down in heavier volumes, bearing behind in their flight a thousand comet-like 

 sparkles of spray. . . Here and there a deeper channel has been worn, 

 down which a larger body of water falls into the basin below, again to 

 rebound, boiling, to the surface, over which rose swift volumes of smoke from 

 the falling mass, puffed out like great discharges of musketry, and enveloping 

 the scene in an aerial misty shroud, through which the oblique rays of the sun 



