484 FIRST SIGHT OF VICTORIA FAIJ,S. 



that the " Thames " and the " Pool " were different 

 rivers, he having seen neither the one nor the other. 

 Leeambye and Zambesi mean the very same thing, viz. 

 the River. 



Sekeletu intended to accompany me, but, one canoe 

 only having come instead of the two he had ordered, he 

 resigned it to me. After twenty minutes' sail from Kalai, 

 we came in sight, for the first time, of the columns of 

 vapour, appropriately called " smoke," rising at a distance 

 of five or six miles, exactly as when large tracts of grass are 

 burned in Africa. Five columns now arose, and bending 

 in the direction of the wind, they seemed placed against 

 a low ridge covered with trees ; the tops of the columns 

 at this distance appeared to mingle with the clouds. 

 They were white below, and higher up became dark, so as 

 to simulate smoke very closely. The whole scene was 

 extremely beautiful ; the banks and islands dotted over 

 the river are adorned with sylvan vegetation of great 

 variety of colour and form. At the period of our visit 

 several trees were spangled over with blossoms. Trees 

 have each their own physiognomy. There, towering over 

 all, stands the great burly baobab, each of whose enormous 

 arms would form the trunk of a large tree, besides groups 

 of graceful palms, which, with their feathery-shaped 

 leaves depicted on the sky, lend their beauty to the scene. 

 As a hieroglyphic they always mean " far from home," 

 for one can never get over their foreign air in a picture 

 or landscape. The silvery mohonono, which in the tropics 

 is in form like the cedar of Mbanon, stands in pleasing 

 contrast with the dark colour of the motsouri, whose 

 cypress-form is dotted over at present with its pleasant 

 scarlet fruit. Some trees resemble the great spreading 

 oak, others assume the character of our own elms and 

 chestnuts ; but no one can imagine the beauty of the view 

 from anything witnessed in England. It had never been 

 seen before by European eyes ; but scenes so lovely must 

 have been gazed upon by angels in their flight. The 

 only want felt is that of mountains in the background. 

 The falls are bounded on three sides by ridges 300 or 400 

 feet in height, which are covered with forest, with the red 

 soil appearing among the trees. When about half a mile 

 from the falls, I left the canoe by which we had come 

 down thus far, and embarked in a lighter one, with men 

 well acquainted with the rapids, who, by passing down the 



