Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/352

 road bridge The bridge below the falls is the highest in the world, and in walking across it you are 420 feet above the water in the gorge below. When it was being built, in 1903-5, it was frequently described in the magazines as one of the great wonders of engineering. The bridge is of one span only, of the cantilever type, and 610 feet in length. From the bridge, the hotel, a half-mile away, and near the edge of the canyon, is in plain view. The bridge-tender is a negro boy, and visitors pay him a shilling each to cross and return The present is known as the wet season, and, the Zambesi river being at a high stage, the falls is rather more gorgeous now than it will be later on, when the river is lower. The Zambesi is one of the great rivers of Africa, and is referred to in a big way as we refer to the Mississippi or Missouri; citizens here frequently refer to "the vast territory south of the Zambesi," as the Mississippi and Missouri rivers are dividing-lines in the United States The falls were discovered by Dr. David Livingstone in 1854, and named in honor of Queen Victoria. Livingstone died in Africa, of the fever. He had faithful friends among his native followers, and when they found him dead, they embalmed his body as best they could, and carried it fifteen hundred miles to the sea, whence it was taken to England, and buried in Westminster Abbey The hills around Victoria Falls are covered with a growth of inferior timber, and this continues until the end of the railway is reached, 400 miles to the north It is estimated that nearly a million and a quarter of visitors see Niagara every year; barely two thousand see Victoria Falls annually, owing