The Fall Is About Thirty Feet.
The Main Body Of Water, Which Comes Over The Ledge Of Rock
When The
River is low, is collected into a space seventy or eighty yards wide
before it takes the leap, and, a
Mass of rock being thrust forward
against the roaring torrent, a loud sound is produced. Tradition reports
the destruction in this place of two hippopotamus-hunters, who,
over-eager in the pursuit of a wounded animal, were, with their intended prey,
drawn down into the frightful gulf. There is also a tradition of a man,
evidently of a superior mind, who left his own countrymen, the Barotse,
and came down the river, took advantage of the falls, and led out
a portion of the water there for irrigation. Such minds must have arisen
from time to time in these regions, as well as in our own country,
but, ignorant of the use of letters, they have left no memorial behind them.
We dug out some of an inferior kind of potato (`Sisinyane') from his garden,
for when once planted it never dies out. This root is bitter and waxy,
though it is cultivated. It was not in flower, so I can not say
whether it is a solanaceous plant or not. One never expects to find a grave
nor a stone of remembrance set up in Africa; the very rocks are illiterate,
they contain so few fossils. Those here are of reddish variegated,
hardened sandstone, with madrepore holes in it.
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