they join the foaming flood with its myriads of similarly glistening drops, sparkling eyes of the fair water nymphs, from which flood they had been separated, as in rushing from the opposite rugged cliff, into the boisterous depth below, they were converted into dense fog, which, rising in the form of thick columns of smoke, again fell in copious showers to refresh the vicinity of the magnificent falls. I stood on the brink of a prodigious rock-trough of nature, about four hundred feet deep, equally wide in the middle, and about one mile in extent from east to west, with sides consisting of stoep precipitous rocks.
The southern edge of the precipice on which I stood is cleft asunder, and turning off to the right, forms a kind of winding passage around me. The opposite rocky wall is higher than the one on which I stood. It is the precipice over which the waters of the Zambezi throw themselves, thus forming the Victoria Falls. On its western and eastern parts it is quite steep and uninterrupted, whilst the middle displays large projecting cliffs, on which the rolling waters break, and then in cascades fall to join the rapid current below, whilst on both sides they crash over the smoothly-worn edge without further impediment. The water does not fall in an uninterrupted volume over the steep precipice, but is divided into alternate narrow and broad streams, caused by the many rocky islands rising along the border of the abyss. The smaller islands are quite barren; the larger ones, on the contrary, are covered with luxuriant tropical vegetation, of which the creeping plants and wine palms still more contribute to the beauty of the natural scenery which unfolds itself so unexpectedly to the eye, imparting to the whole a certain air of wild grace. Several groups of larger islands, similarly adorned, emerge from the back ground. If the eye falls on these lovely islands, which so agreeably contrast with the azure firmament, and then lowers itself a little to the playful waves around them, these appear only slightly agitated, and slow in their undulating motion. But the waves increase in rapidity as they approach the chasm, and here and there dash against a rock, by which the stream is frequently interrupted in its great breadth above the falls, causing the angry element to foam and throw the white spray high in the air, then to hasten with redoubled force towards the bottom of the yawning abyss. Where most of the charming islands adorn the border of the chasm on its western part, a gradual declivity is perceptible, as the stream there greatly increases its rapidity, hastening towards the ridge, where it abruptly descends in a white foaming sheet, making a strange and pretty contrast to the dark ground of the rocks as it unites with the boiling waters beneath, with a thundering rush. While the bottom of the abyss cannot be seen from the southern edge (where I stood), the
