efully 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 be