g trees, tall cocoanut palms, and luxuriant undergrowth, now
emerging like a huge blue serpent encrusted with diamonds, so brightly
does the clear water sparkle in the sun, you note that it finally loses
itself in a heavy, impenetrable mass of green forest. And now for a few
moments the newcomer is puzzled to account for a dense white cloud,
arisen apparently from nowhere, which is resting where the forest is
thickest and most verdant, now larger, then smaller, anon denser or more
filmy, but never changing its place, never disappearing, while the
distant thunder, to which you had almost got accustomed, strikes upon
your ear and gives the explanation you are seeking.

Yes, that white cloud has been there for centuries, and will be there
while the world lasts, in spite of trains, bridges, etc. It marks the
Victoria Falls, and is a landmark for many miles round. How amazed must
the great Livingstone and his intrepid followers have been to see this
first sign of their grand discovery after their weary march through a
country of dense forests and sandy wastes, the natural features of which
could not in the least have suggested such marvels as exist in the
stupendous river and the water-power to which it gives birth! When
mentioning that great explorer--whose name in this district, after a
lapse of nearly fifty years, remains a household word among the natives,
handed down from father to son--it is a curious fact, and one that
should prove a lesson to many travellers from the old world as well as
from the new, that only on one tree is he believed to have cut his
initials in Africa, and that tree stands on the island in the centre of
the Zambesi, the island that bears his name, and that absolutely
overhangs and stems the centre of the awe-inspiring cataract.

I must now try in a few words to give a short account of what we saw at
the Victoria Falls in July, 1903, when the breath of civilization had
scarcely touched them. To-day they are easy of access, and the changes
that have been wrought have come so swiftly that, no doubt, recent
visitors will scarcely recognize the localities of which I write. I must
first ask such to be lenient with me, and to follow me down the sandy
road leading from the Constitution Hill Compound to the Controller's
Camp on the bank of the river, about two miles nearer the Falls. There
were to be seen a collection of huts and offices, where the Controller
conducted his important business of food-purve