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| David
Livingstone's First Impression of Victoria Falls (
Mosi-oa- Tunya ) |
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. . . the Victoria Falls have been formed by a crack right across the river, in the hard, black, basaltic rock which there formed the bed of the Zambesi. The lips of the crack are still quite sharp, save about three feet of the edge over which the water rolls. . . . When the mighty rift occurred, no change of level took place in the two parts of the bed of the river thus rent asunder, consequently, in coming down the river, to Garden Island, the water suddenly disappears, and we see the opposite side of the cleft, with grass and
trees growing where once the river ran, on the same level as that part of its bed on which we
sail... 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.
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The whole body of water rolls clear over, quite unbroken; but, after a descent of ten or more feet, the entire
pass suddenly becomes like a huge sheet of driven snow. Pieces of water leap off it in the form of comets with tails streaming behind, till the whole snowy sheet becomes myriads of rushing, leaping, aqueous comets.
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Much of the spray, rising to the west of Garden Island, falls on the grove of evergreen trees opposite; and from the leaves, 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. . . .
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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 (Victoria Falls), we can sympathise 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'?
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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.
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| Source and copyright:
LIVINGSTONE, D. and LIVINGSTONE, C. Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries, London, 1865. |
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| Related documents: |
| virtual
tour of Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe) |
| Chapman's
first impression of the Victoria Falls |
| Holub's
first impression of the Victoria Falls |
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