Once only did the medicine seem to
have lost something of its efficacy.
We were driving swiftly down, a
black rock over which the white foam flew, lay directly in our path,
the pole was planted against it as readily as ever, but it slipped,
just as Tuba put forth his strength to turn the bow off. We struck
hard, and were half-full of water in a moment; Tuba recovered himself
as speedily, shoved off the bow, and shot the canoe into a still
shallow place, to bale out the water. Here we were given to
understand that it was not the medicine which was at fault; that had
lost none of its virtue; the accident was owing entirely to Tuba
having started without his breakfast. Need it be said we never let
Tuba go without that meal again?
We landed at the head of Garden Island, which is situated near the
middle of the river and on the lip of the Falls. On reaching that
lip, and peering over the giddy height, the wondrous and unique
character of the magnificent cascade at once burst upon us.
It is rather a hopeless task to endeavour to convey an idea of it in
words, since, as was remarked on the spot, an accomplished painter,
even by a number of views, could but impart a faint impression of the
glorious scene. The probable mode of its formation may perhaps help
to the conception of its peculiar shape. Niagara has been formed by
a wearing back of the rock over which the river falls; and during a
long course of ages, it has gradually receded, and left a broad,
deep, and pretty straight trough in front. It goes on wearing back
daily, and may yet discharge the lakes from which its river - the St.
Lawrence - flows. But the Victoria Falls have been formed by a crack
right across the river, in the hard, black, basaltic rock which there
formed the bed of the Zambesi. The lips of the crack are still quite
sharp, save about three feet of the edge over which the river rolls.
The walls go sheer down from the lips without any projecting crag, or
symptoms of stratification or dislocation. When the mighty rift
occurred, no change of level took place in the two parts of the bed
of the river thus rent asunder, consequently, in coming down the
river to Garden Island, the water suddenly disappears, and we see the
opposite side of the cleft, with grass and trees growing where once
the river ran, on the same level as that part of its bed on which we
sail. The first crack is, in length, a few yards more than the
breadth of the Zambesi, which by measurement we found to be a little
over 1860 yards, but this number we resolved to retain as indicating
the year in which the Fall was for the first time carefully examined.
The main stream here runs nearly north and south, and the cleft
across it is nearly east and west. The depth of the rift was
measured by lowering a line, to the end of which a few bullets and a
foot of white cotton cloth were tied. One of us lay with his head
over a projecting crag, and watched the descending calico, till,
after his companions had paid out 310 feet, the weight rested on a
sloping projection, probably 50 feet from the water below, the actual
bottom being still further down. The white cloth now appeared the
size of a crown-piece. On measuring the width of this deep cleft by
sextant, it was found at Garden Island, its narrowest part, to be
eighty yards, and at its broadest somewhat more. Into this chasm, of
twice the depth of Niagara-fall, the river, a full mile wide, rolls
with a deafening roar; and this is Mosi-oa-tunya, or the Victoria
Falls.
Looking from Garden Island, down to the bottom of the abyss, nearly
half a mile of water, which has fallen over that portion of the Falls
to our right, or west of our point of view, is seen collected in a
narrow channel twenty or thirty yards wide, and flowing at exactly
right angles to its previous course, to our left; while the other
half, or that which fell over the eastern portion of the Falls, is
seen in the left of the narrow channel below, coming towards our
right. Both waters unite midway, in a fearful boiling whirlpool, and
find an outlet by a crack situated at right angles to the fissure of
the Falls. This outlet is about 1170 yards from the western end of
the chasm, and some 600 from its eastern end; the whirlpool is at its
commencement. The Zambesi, now apparently not more than twenty or
thirty yards wide, rushes and surges south, through the narrow
escape-channel for 130 yards; then enters a second chasm somewhat
deeper, and nearly parallel with the first. Abandoning the bottom of
the eastern half of this second chasm to the growth of large trees,
it turns sharply off to the west, and forms a promontory, with the
escape-channel at its point, of 1170 yards long, and 416 yards broad
at the base. After reaching this base, the river runs abruptly round
the head of another promontory, and flows away to the east, in a
third chasm; then glides round a third promontory, much narrower than
the rest, and away back to the west, in a fourth chasm; and we could
see in the distance that it appeared to round still another
promontory, and bend once more in another chasm towards the east. In
this gigantic, zigzag, yet narrow trough, the rocks are all so
sharply cut and angular, that the idea at once arises that the hard
basaltic trap must have been riven into its present shape by a force
acting from beneath, and that this probably took place when the
ancient inland seas were let off by similar fissures nearer the
ocean.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 58 of 134
Words from 58279 to 59295
of 136856
