MEASURING A RIVER WITH THREAD. 487 



ascending from this strange abyss. They are evidently 

 formed by the compression suffered by the force of the 

 water's own fall, into an unyielding wedge-shaped space. 

 Of the five columns, two on the right, and one on the left 

 of the island were the largest, and the streams which 

 formed them seemed each to exceed in size the falls of 

 the Clyde at Stonebyres, when that river is in flood. This 

 was the period of low water in the I v eeambye, but, as far 

 as I could guess, there was a flow of five or six hundred 

 yards of water, which, at the edge of the fall, seemed at 

 least three feet deep. I write in the hope that others 

 more capable of jucfging distances than myself will visit 

 this scene, and I state simply the impressions made on 

 my mind at the time. I thought, and do still think, the 

 river above the falls to be one thousand yards broad ; 

 but I am a poor judge of distances on water, for I showed 

 a naval friend what I supposed to be four hundred yards 

 in the bay of Loanda, and, to my surprise, he pronounced 

 it to be nine hundred. I tried to measure the Leeambye 

 with a strong thread, the only line I had in my possession, 

 but when the men had gone two or three hundred yards, 

 they got into conversation, and did not hear us shouting 

 that the line had become entangled. By still going on they 

 broke it and, being carried away down the stream, it 

 was lost on a snag. In vain I tried to bring to my recol- 

 lection the way I had been taught to measure a river, 

 by taking an angle with the sextant. That I once knew 

 it, and that it was easy, were all the lost ideas I could 

 recall, and they only increased my vexation. However, I 

 measured the river farther down by another plan, and 

 then I discovered that the Portuguese had measured it at 

 Tete, and found it a little over one thousand yards. At 

 the falls it is as broad as at Tete, if not more so. Whoever 

 may come after me will not, I trust, find reason to say I 

 have indulged in exaggeration. 



The fissure is said by the Makololo to be very much 

 deeper farther to the eastward • there is one part at 

 which the walls are so sloping, that people accustomed to 

 it, can go down by descending in a sitting position. The 

 Makololo on one occasion, pursuing some fugitive Batoka, 

 saw them, unable to stop the impetus of their flight 

 at the edge, literally dashed to pieces at the bottom. 

 They beheld the stream like a " white cord " at the 

 bottom, and so far down (probably 300 feet) that they 



