RIDGE AT VICTORIA FALLS.

[Illustration]

If a railway train could travel over a rainbow, it would hardly have
been necessary to build a bridge over the Zambesi River at the Victoria
Falls, for during seven months of the year a rainbow can always be seen
there; but about the end of August the fairy architects take it down,
and do not come to build it again until the beginning of February. The
rainbow is made by the sunlight shining on the dancing drops of spray
that leap from the waterfall while the river is in flood. But when,
after the end of August, the flood subsides, the spray subsides too, and
the lovely rainbow fades from sight until the rainy season has returned.

This mighty river collects its waters over a space of a million square
miles, but on its way to the sea is met by many difficulties. The
greatest of these occurs near Kazungula, on the borders of Rhodesia, and
is known by the natives as the 'place of the sounding smoke.' David
Livingstone, who, fifty years ago, was the first white man to see it,
called it the Victoria Falls, and has told the world how he crept to the
edge of the awful abyss and peered over in the vain effort to see the
bottom through that roaring, blinding cloud of 'sounding smoke.' Long,
long ages ago a terrible earthquake occurred at this spot, and from
shore to shore of the Zambesi (which is here more than a mile wide) a
huge crack, one hundred yards across, suddenly opened. Into this the
river disappears with a mighty thunder, as though to lose itself in the
centre of the earth. Four hundred feet down the bottom of the chasm is
reached, and, beating themselves against the opposite wall, the waters
struggle to find an outlet, throwing up in their fury white clouds of
spray, which rise to a height of one thousand two hundred feet, and can
be seen for a distance of ten miles.

Near the eastern end of the mile-long crack, there is an opening in the
form of a narrow gorge one hundred yards wide, twisting and twining in
the most erratic manner for more than twenty miles to the southward. And
through this, imprisoned by rocky cliffs four hundred feet high, the
boiling Zambesi struggles on its way to the sea. On the lip of the
cataract, as though carried to the edge by the flowing waters, hang
green wooded isles, glittering with the ever-falling spray and waving
light fronds of fern and palm, in the cool airs that are constantly
being driven by the falls from the depths below them. It