The Land Beyond, Or On The South Of The Falls, Retains, As Already
Remarked, The Same Level As Before The Rent Was Made.
It is as if
the trough below Niagara were bent right and left, several times
before it reached the railway bridge.
The land in the supposed bends
being of the same height as that above the Fall, would give standing-
places, or points of view, of the same nature as that from the
railway-bridge, but the nearest would be only eighty yards, instead
of two miles (the distance to the bridge) from the face of the
cascade. The tops of the promontories are in general flat, smooth,
and studded with trees. The first, with its base on the east, is at
one place so narrow, that it would be dangerous to walk to its
extremity. On the second, however, we found a broad rhinoceros path
and a hut; but, unless the builder were a hermit, with a pet
rhinoceros, we cannot conceive what beast or man ever went there for.
On reaching the apex of this second eastern promontory we saw the
great river, of a deep sea-green colour, now sorely compressed,
gliding away, at least 400 feet below us.
Garden Island, when the river is low, commands the best view of the
Great Fall chasm, as also of the promontory opposite, with its grove
of large evergreen trees, and brilliant rainbows of three-quarters of
a circle, two, three, and sometimes even four in number, resting on
the face of the vast perpendicular rock, down which tiny streams are
always running to be swept again back by the upward rushing vapour.
But as, at Niagara, one has to go over to the Canadian shore to see
the chief wonder - the Great Horse-shoe Fall - so here we have to cross
over to Moselekatse's side to the promontory of evergreens, for the
best view of the principal Falls of Mosi-oa-tunya. Beginning,
therefore, at the base of this promontory, and facing the Cataract,
at the west end of the chasm, there is, first, a fall of thirty-six
yards in breadth, and of course, as they all are, upwards of 310 feet
in depth. Then Boaruka, a small island, intervenes, and next comes a
great fall, with a breadth of 573 yards; a projecting rock separates
this from a second grand fall of 325 yards broad; in all, upwards of
900 yards of perennial Falls. Further east stands Garden Island;
then, as the river was at its lowest, came a good deal of the bare
rock of its bed, with a score of narrow falls, which, at the time of
flood, constitute one enormous cascade of nearly another half-mile.
Near the east end of the chasm are two larger falls, but they are
nothing at low water compared to those between the islands.
The whole body of water rolls clear over, quite unbroken; but, after
a descent of ten or more feet, the entire mass suddenly becomes like
a huge sheet of driven snow. Pieces of water leap off it in the form
of comets with tails streaming behind, till the whole snowy sheet
becomes myriads of rushing, leaping, aqueous comets. This
peculiarity was not observed by Charles Livingstone at Niagara, and
here it happens, possibly from the dryness of the atmosphere, or
whatever the cause may be which makes every drop of Zambesi water
appear to possess a sort of individuality. It runs off the ends of
the paddles, and glides in beads along the smooth surface, like drops
of quicksilver on a table. Here we see them in a conglomeration,
each with a train of pure white vapour, racing down till lost in
clouds of spray. A stone dropped in became less and less to the eye,
and at last disappeared in the dense mist below.
Charles Livingstone had seen Niagara, and gave Mosi-oa-tunya the
palm, though now at the end of a drought, and the river at its very
lowest. Many feel a disappointment on first seeing the great
American Falls, but Mosi-oa-tunya is so strange, it must ever cause
wonder. In the amount of water, Niagara probably excels, though not
during the months when the Zambesi is in flood. The vast body of
water, separating in the comet-like forms described, necessarily
encloses in its descent a large volume of air, which, forced into the
cleft, to an unknown depth, rebounds, and rushes up loaded with
vapour to form the three or even six columns, as if of steam, visible
at the Batoka village Moachemba, twenty-one miles distant. On
attaining a height of 200, or at most 300 feet from the level of the
river above the cascade, this vapour becomes condensed into a
perpetual shower of fine rain. Much of the spray, rising to the west
of Garden Island, falls on the grove of evergreen trees opposite; and
from their leaves, heavy drops are for ever falling, to form sundry
little rills, which, in running down the steep face of rock, are
blown off and turned back, or licked off their perpendicular bed, up
into the column from which they have just descended.
The morning sun gilds these columns of watery smoke with all the
glowing colours of double or treble rainbows. The evening sun, from
a hot yellow sky, imparts a sulphureous hue, and gives one the
impression that the yawning gulf might resemble the mouth of the
bottomless pit. No bird sits and sings on the branches of the grove
of perpetual showers, or ever builds its nest there. We saw
hornbills and flocks of little black weavers flying across from the
mainland to the islands, and from the islands to the points of the
promontories and back again, but they uniformly shunned the region of
perpetual rain, occupied by the evergreen grove. The sunshine,
elsewhere in this land so overpowering, never penetrates the deep
gloom of that shade. In the presence of the strange Mosi-oa-tunya,
we can sympathize with those who, when the world was young, peopled
earth, air, and river, with beings not of mortal form.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 59 of 134
Words from 59296 to 60324
of 136856
