, 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.
Sacred to what deity would be this awful chasm and that dark grove, over
which hovers an ever-abiding "pillar of cloud"?

The ancient Batoka chieftains used Kazeruka, now Garden Island, and
Boaruka, the island further west, also on the lip of the Falls, as sacred
spots for worshipping the Deity. It is no wonder that under the cloudy
columns, and near the brilliant rainbows, with the ceaseless roar of the
cataract, with the perpetual flow, as if pouring forth from the hand of
the Almighty, their souls should be filled with reverential awe. It
inspired wonder in the native mind throughout the interior. Among the
first questions asked by Sebituane of Mr. Oswell and Dr. Livingstone, in
1851, was, "Have you any smoke soundings in your country," and "what
causes the smoke to rise for ever so high out of water?" In that year
its fame was heard 200 miles off, and it was approached within two days;
but it was seen by no European till 1855, when Dr. Livingstone visited it
on his way to the East Coast. Being then accompanied as far as this Fall
by Sekeletu and 200 followers, his stay was necessarily short; and the
two days there were employed in observations for fixing the geographical
position of the place, and turning the showers, that at times sweep from
the columns of vapour across the i