520 
VICTORIA FALLS. 
Chap. XXYI. 
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 hghter one, with men well 
acquainted with the rapids, who, by passing down the 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 lip over which the water rolls. In coming 
liither, 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 beheve 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 fissm^e into which it disappeared, 
being only 80 feet distant. At least I did not comprehend it until, 
creeping with awe to the verge, I peered dovm 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 Zam¬ 
besi, and then prolonged from the left bank away through thnty 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 London 
mud; and a fissure made therein from one end of the tunnel to the 
other, down tlnough the keystones of the arch, and prolonged 
from the left end of the tunnel tlnough thirty miles of hills; the 
pathway being 100 feet down from the bed of the river histead 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 fissm^e on 
the right of the island, one sees notliing but a dense white cloud, 
wliich, at the time we visited the spot, had two bright rainbows on 
it. (The sun was on the meridian, and the declination about equal 
