with a breadth of 573 yards; a projecting
rock separates this from a second grand fall of 325 yards broad; in all,
upwards of 900 yards of perennial Falls. Further east stands Garden
Island; then, as the river was at its lowest, came a good deal of the
bare rock of its bed, with a score of narrow falls, which, at the time of
flood, constitute one enormous cascade of nearly another half-mile. Near
the east end of the chasm are two larger falls, but they are nothing at
low water compared to those between the islands.

The whole body of water rolls clear over, quite unbroken; but, after a
descent of ten or more feet, the entire mass 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. This peculiarity was not observed
by Charles Livingstone at Niagara, and here it happens, possibly from the
dryness of the atmosphere, or whatever the cause may be which makes every
drop of Zambesi water appear to possess a sort of individuality. It runs
off the ends of the paddles, and glides in beads along the smooth
surface, like drops of quicksilver on a table. Here we see them in a
conglomeration, each with a train of pure white vapour, racing down till
lost in clouds of spray. A stone dropped in became less and less to the
eye, and at last disappeared in the dense mist below.

Charles Livingstone had seen Niagara, and gave Mosi-oa-tunya the palm,
though now at the end of a drought, and the river at its very lowest.
Many feel a disappointment on first seeing the great American Falls, but
Mosi-oa-tunya is so strange, it must ever cause wonder. In the amount of
water, Niagara probably excels, though not during the months when the
Zambesi is in flood. The vast body of water, separating in the comet-
like forms described, necessarily encloses in its descent a large volume
of air, which, forced into the cleft, to an unknown depth, rebounds, and
rushes up loaded with vapour to form the three or even six columns, as if
of steam, visible at the Batoka village Moachemba, twenty-one miles
distant. On attaining a height of 200, or at most 300 feet from the
level of the river above the cascade, this vapour becomes condensed into
a perpetual shower of fine rain. Much of the spray, rising to the west
of Garden Island, falls on the grove of evergreen trees opposite; and
from their leaves