is a spot of
great beauty, and it is no wonder that many people expressed regret when
they learned that the railway was fast approaching, and would leap
across the gorge through which the waters escape. But after all, in a
scene of such magnitude, we may hope that the railway will show no more
than a scratch in the wide sea-sands.

The spot chosen for the bridge is some four hundred yards below the
falls, and, owing to the sudden bends in the channel, the merest glimpse
only can be caught of the falling water.

Sir Charles Metcalf, engineer of the Rhodesian Railway Company, having
surveyed the place, made a design for the bridge, and a firm of
engineers in Darlington, England, undertook to build it. In the
meantime, the railway at Buluwayo, three hundred miles away, had been
continued to the edge of the gorge in readiness to convey the material.

It was decided that the bridge should be in the form of an arch made of
steel girders, the central span being five hundred feet. The work was
begun in October, 1904. First a pair of 'shear legs' was erected on the
southern side opposite the place where the railway from Buluwayo ended.
This is a mechanical contrivance of the nature of a crane, capable of
being raised and lowered, and is formed of two or more poles standing
some yards apart at their feet, but joined together at their heads, to
support a revolving pulley. To save the loss of time and great
inconvenience of crossing the river above the falls, it became necessary
to find some means of spanning this narrow gorge before beginning to
build the bridge. This was accomplished by firing a sky-rocket from the
northern cliff-top with a length of light string attached. To the end of
the string a slightly stouter cord was tied; then a strong rope, and
finally a wire cable two inches thick. Thus, that which could not be
done all at once, was done by degrees. The wire cable, being passed over
the pulley on the shear legs, was fastened on the other side of the
gorge to the top of a steel tower, thirty-six feet high.

From this thin aerial railway hung the 'cage' in which the workmen would
cross and recross, and do a great deal of the bridge-building work,
being raised and lowered to the required position by the shear legs.
Some feet above the two-inch rope ran an electric wire with a motor
engine which propelled the car backwards and forwards. Thus we may
almost say that the first conveyance across the Zambesi was an electric