LIVINGSTONE DESCRIBES THE VICTORIA FAI^ES. 485 



centre of the stream in the eddies and still places caused 

 by many jutting rocks, brought me to an island situated 

 in the middle of the river, and on the edge of the Up 

 over which the water rolls. In coming hither, there was 

 danger of being swept down by the streams which rushed 

 along on each side of the island ; but the river was now 

 low, and we sailed where it is totally impossible to go when 

 the water is high. But though we had reached the island, 

 and were within a few yards of the spot, a view from 

 which would solve the whole problem, I believe that no one 

 could perceive where the vast body of water went ; it 

 seemed to lose itself in the earth, the opposite lip of the 

 fissure into which it disappeared, being only 80 feet dis- 

 tant. At least I did not comprehend it until, creeping 

 with awe to the verge, I peered down into a large rent 

 which had been made from bank to bank of the broad 

 Zambesi, and saw that a stream of a thousand yards 

 broad, leaped down a hundred feet, and then became 

 suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen or twenty 

 yards. The entire falls are simply a crack made in a hard 

 basaltic rock from the right to the left bank of the Zambesi, 

 and then prolonged from the left bank away through 

 thirty or forty miles of hills. If one imagines the Thames 

 filled with low tree-covered hills immediately beyond 

 the tunnel, extending as far as Gravesend ; the bed of 

 black basaltic rock instead of I^ondon mud ; and a fissure 

 made therein from one end of the tunnel to the other,, 

 down through the keystones of the arch, and prolonged 

 from the left end of the tunnel through thirty miles of 

 hills ; the pathway being 100 feet down from the bed of 

 the river instead of what it is, with the lips of the fissure 

 from 80 to 100 feet apart ; then fancy the Thames leaping 

 bodily into the gulf ; and forced there to change its 

 direction, and flow from the right to the left bank ; and 

 then rush boiling and roaring through the hills, — he may 

 have some idea of what takes place at this, the most 

 wonderful sight I had witnessed in Africa. In looking 

 down into the fissure on the right of the island, one sees 

 nothing but a dense white cloud, which, at the time we 

 visited the spot, had two bright rainbows on it. (The sun 

 was on the meridian, and the declination about equal 

 to the latitude of the place.) From this cloud rushed 

 up a great jet of vapour exactly like steam, and it mounted 

 200 or 300 feet high ,• there condensing, it changed its 



