The Boy Travellers in the Far East, Part Fifth: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through AfricaKnox, Thomas Wallace
General
The Boy Travellers in the Far East, Part Fifth: Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through Africa
Knox, Thomas Wallace
Africa -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature; Africa, Central -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature
"The land beyond, or on the south of the falls, retains, as already
remarked, the same level as before the rent was made. It is as if
the trough below Niagara were bent right and left several times
before it reached the railway bridge. The land in the supposed
bends, being of the same height as that above the fall, would give
standing-places, or points of view, of the same nature as that from
the railway bridge; but the nearest would be only eighty yards,
instead of two miles (the distance to the bridge), from the face of
the cascade. The tops of the promontories are in general flat,
smooth, and studded with trees. The first, with its base on the
east, is at one place so narrow that it would be dangerous to walk
to its extremity. On the second, however, we found a broad
rhinoceros path and a hut; but, unless the builder were a hermit,
with a pet rhinoceros, we cannot conceive what beast or man ever
went there for. On reaching the apex of this second eastern
promontory we saw the great river, of a deep sea-green color, now
sorely compressed, gliding away at least four hundred feet below
us.
"Garden Island, when the river is low, commands the best view of
the Great Fall chasm, as also of the promontory opposite, with its
grove of large evergreen trees, and brilliant rainbows of
three-quarters of a circle, two, three, and sometimes even four in
number, resting on the face of the vast perpendicular rock, down
which tiny streams are always running, to be swept again back by
the upward rushing vapor. But, as at Niagara one has to go over to
the Canadian shore to see the chief wonder--the great Horseshoe
Fall--so here we have to cross over to Moselekatse's side, to the
promontory of evergreens, for the best view of the principal falls
of Mosi-oa-tunya. Beginning, therefore, at the base of this
promontory, and facing the cataract, at the west end of the chasm,
there is, first, a fall of thirty-six yards in breadth, and of
course, as they all are, upward of three hundred and ten feet in
depth. Then Boaruka, a small island, intervenes, and next comes a
great fall, with a breadth of five hundred and seventy-three yards;
a projecting rock separates this from a second grand fall of three
hundred and twenty-five yards broad--in all upward of nine hundred
yards of perennial falls. Farther 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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