y the people kept close in their huts, guzzling a kind
of beer called 'boyola', and seeming to enjoy the copious perspiration
which it induces. As evening set in the dance began, which was kept up
in the moonlight till long after midnight. Sekeletu, proud of his new
uniform, and pleased with the prospect of trade which had been opened,
entertained Livingstone hospitably, and promised to fit him out for his
eastern journey as soon as the rains had commenced, and somewhat cooled
the burning soil.

He set out early in November, the chief with a large body of retainers
accompanying him as far as the Falls of Mosioatunye, the most remarkable
piece of natural scenery in all Africa, which no European had ever seen
or heard of. The Zambesi, here a thousand yards broad, seems all at
once to lose itself in the earth. It tumbles into a fissure in the hard
basaltic rock, running at a right-angle with the course of the stream,
and prolonged for thirty miles through the hills. This fissure, hardly
eighty feet broad, with sides perfectly perpendicular, is fully a
hundred feet in depth down to the surface of the water, which shows like
a white thread at its bottom. The noise made by the descent of such
a mass of water into this seething abyss is heard for miles, and five
distinct columns of vapor rise like pillars of smoke to an
enormous height. Hence the Makololo name for the cataract, 'Mosi oa
tunye'--"Smoke sounds there!"--for which Livingstone, with questionable
taste, proposes to substitute the name of "Victoria Falls"--a change
which we trust the world will not sanction.

From these falls the country gradually ascends toward the east, the
river finding its way by this deep fissure through the hills. Every
thing shows that this whole region, for hundreds of miles, was once
the bed of an immense fresh-water lake. By some convulsion of nature,
occurring at a period geologically recent, this fissure was formed, and
through it the lake was drained, with the exception of its deepest part,
which constitutes the present Lake Ngami. Similar indications exist of
the former existence of other immense bodies of water, which have in
like manner been drained by fissures through the surrounding elevations,
leaving shallow lakes at the lowest points. Such are, undoubtedly, Tsad
at the north, Ngami at the south, Dilolo at the west, and Taganyika and
Nyanja, of which we have only vague reports, at the east. This great
lake region of former days s