206 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.R 



are seen in ever-shifting perspective. But while watching intently to catch 

 every charm of these falls, it vanishes on the instant. The view is always 

 changing, yet ever recurring. Creep again to the uppermost pinnacle over 

 the outlet — a giddy height — and peer into the crack to the right and left ; 

 here large, heavy, fleecy masses chase one another down like phantoms 

 chasing phantoms, and then dissolve into thin air before they are overtaken. 

 Wherever the large broad masses fall, the height does not seem so stupendous 

 as where the streams are smaller." 



At some points the spectator can look down into the chasm for a distance 

 of three hundred feet, but when a large body of water raises clouds of spray 

 the eye can penetrate only to about a third of that area. From the surface 

 of the water to the bottom of the rent, the distance must be very great, 

 considering the enormous quantity of water which flows into it. Before the 

 disruption of the earth which formed the crack, the whole of the Makololo 

 country and the valley of the river, as Dr. Livingstone pointed out, must 

 have been under water ; and, from his observations and those of others, it is 

 evident that the falls are of recent formation, and may not date many 

 generations back. 



Taking leave of Sekeletu and his followers, the party pushed northwards 

 through the Batoka country. This powerful and numerous tribe had been 

 conquered and decimated by Sebituane and the Matabele, until vast tracts of 

 fruitful hill and plain, in which the larger game abounded, were almost devoid 

 of human life. The Batoka people are of a low type, and are of a cruel and 

 vindictive disposition, evil qualities, probably fostered by the wars they have 

 been forced to wage against more powerful tribes. They have a barbarous 

 habit of knocking out the front teeth in the upper jaw, which gives to their 

 faces a hideous expression. They explained that they did this in order to 

 look like oxen, and not like zebras, as they hold the latter animals in 

 detestation. 



Speaking of the country he was now passing through in his letter to Sir 

 Roderick Murchison, Livingstone says : — 



" The sources of the rivulets, which have all a mountain- torrent character, 

 as well as the temperature of the boiling water, showed that we were ascending 

 the eastern ridge. The first stream is named Lekone, and is perennial. It 

 runs in what may have been the ancient bed of the Zambesi, before the fissure 

 was made. I could examine it only by the light of the moon, but then it 

 seemed very like an ancient river channel. The Lekone runs contrary to the 

 direction in which the Zambesi did and does now flow, and joins the latter 

 five or six miles above Balai. If little or no alteration of level occurred when 

 the fissure was formed; then, the altitude of the former channel being only a 

 little higher than Linyanti, we have a confirmation of what is otherwise 

 clearly evident, that the Zambesi was collected into a vast lake, which included 



