Chap. XXVI. 
YICTOEIA FALLS. 
519 
magnificent river, tlie Leeambye, had ‘‘no connection with the 
Zambesi, but flowed under the Kalahari Desert, and became lost 
and “ that, as all the old maps asserted, the Zambesi took its rise 
in the very hills to which we have now come.” This modest as¬ 
sertion smacks exactly as if a native of Timbuctu should declare, 
that the “ Thames ” and the “ Pool ” were different rivers, he 
having seen neither the one nor the other. Leeambye and Zam¬ 
besi mean the very same thing, viz. the Kivee. 
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 vegeta¬ 
tion 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, beside groups of graceful palms, which, 
with their feathery-shaped leaves depicted on the sky, lend then- 
beauty to the scene. As a hieroglyphic they always mean “ far 
from home,” for one can never get over their foreign air in a pic¬ 
ture or landscape. The silvery mohonono, which in the tropics is 
in form like the cedar of Lebanon, 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 
