The remaining most characteristic feature of the Falls represented in this drawing is that of the double rainbow spanning the abyss. The marvellous colouring of these rainbows, which are frequently visible here, has struck all who have beheld them; their “tints,” says Baines, “more beautiful than in England’s clouded climate one can ever dream of.” Whenever the sun falls upon the clouds of spray these rainbows are always present, sometimes two, sometimes three in number, and the brilliancy of their colouring can scarcely be exaggerated. “Rainbows,” writes Chapman in his description of the Falls, the first day he saw them, “so bright, so vivid, are never seen in the skies. The lower one in particular [on this occasion], probably from the contrast with the black-looking rocks below, was _too_ vivid, nay, almost blinding, to look upon, defying imitation by the most skilful artist and all the colours at his command, yet imparting its heavenly tints to every object over which it successively passed.” So marked a characteristic of the spot are these rainbows that it appears, according to Livingstone, the early native name of the Falls was “Chongwe,” signifying the Rainbow, or the Place of the Rainbow; a name, however, which has since given place to others. Frank Oates’s boys spoke of the Falls as Metse-a-tunya, a compound word, signifying “water-sounding;” whilst the name which Livingstone received for them, as used by the Makalolo at the time of both his visits, was not dissimilar, viz., Mosi-oa-tunya, or “smoke-sounding,” from the smoke-like appearance of the columns of spray which rise above the cataract. [Illustration: VICTORIA FALLS, ZAMBESI. (WESTERN EXTREMITY.)] With regard to the other general features of the Falls not referred to above but little remains to be added. Their actual height, as estimated by Livingstone, is about 360 feet from the top of the precipice to the surface of the water in the abyss; the columns of spray, which are driven upwards by the rush of air from the channel as the water descends into this narrow space, ascending to a height variously estimated by those who have seen them--and no doubt varying with the state of the atmosphere and the volume of water in the river at different times--at from six to eight hundred feet, or something over. It is these vapour clouds which, visible at a distance of upwards of twenty miles, as distinctly observed by Livingstone, mark the position of the Falls long before the traveller approaches them. Frank Oates, as seen in the preceding chapter, distinguished them at a distance of about eighteen miles, and his followers heard the roaring of the water at that distance, though he was not sure of doing so himself. Chapman, after he had left the Falls, heard them, he relates, “at a distance of fifteen miles on an elevated region in the south.”