island in bewildering
succession. Away towards the drift three huge black masses were
splashing in the water, which we easily made out to be hippopotami
taking their evening bath, and as we glided along a sleepy crocodile
slipped back into the water from a muddy eminence where it had been
basking in the sun. Then our canoe ran into a creek where leaves and
ferns grew in delightful confusion, and we landed in soft marshy ground
just as the sun was sinking like a red ball into the river, and giving
way to the sovereignty of a glorious full moon, which soon tinged
everything with a silver light, making glades of palms look delightfully
romantic.

Civilization has since found its way to Livingstone. Engines are
whistling and trains are rumbling where then the only tracks were made
by the huge hippos and the shy buck, but they can never efface the
grandeur of the river in its size and calmness; the incomparable
magnificence of the cataract itself; the rainbow, which one cannot see
without retaining a lasting impression of its beauty; and, lastly, that
cloud of white spray, seemingly a sentinel to watch over the strength
and might of the huge river, for so many ages undiscovered.

Many who knew the Falls in their pristine solitude have gladly welcomed
there the advent of twentieth-century developments, of sign-posts, of
advertisements, of seats, of daily posts and papers; but others, some of
the older pioneers, still, perchance, give a passing sigh for the days
when they paddled about the river in a leaky canoe, and letters and
telegrams were not events of everyday occurrence.

In spite of the railway constructed since our visit, few people,
comparatively, have been to North-Western Rhodesia, and yet it is a
country of over 400,000 square miles. It was in October, 1897, that the
then administrator of the country,[47] with five policemen, crossed the
Zambesi and declared the territory to be under the protection of Her
Late Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria. For many years previously the
natives, who are not of a particularly warlike disposition, had been
decimated, and the country laid waste, by the fierce Matabele, who were
in the habit of making periodical raids into this fair land, and of
killing the old men and the young warriors, who made but a slight
resistance; of annexing the attractive ladies as wives and the fat
cattle as prized booty, and then of retreating again south of the mighty
river without fear of reprisals