Page:Victoria Falls.pdf/9

 southwards, for some three or four hundred yards, and turns, cutting an acute angle, once more to the south-east, &c., &c.

Such a ravine, running for miles in its zigzag course, from three hundred and four hundred feet deep, and about as wide on the upper edges, becoming considerably more narrow towards the bottom, is alone something very interesting.

If we now picture the walls of this ravine we see them in some places perpendicular, dark brown, barren of all vegetation; in other places steep, but here and there displaying small crevices, clothed with a lovely green, intermingled with large bright red blossoms, so that the rocky wall appears prettily veined with alternate red and green; other parts, again, exhibit steep, narrow, dark, naked clefts of rock, deeply cutting into the wall of stone, or we see similar rents, only a little widened, trailing to the bottom of the ravine, with a carpet of the most luxuriant vegetation, such as nature alone can produce; some of them, running from the edge of the ravine, unite into a larger one, and present a still more attractive picture. We again observe in some parts the rocky wall not only cleft and perpendicular but also declining in steps and in the form of a cascade, and then either bare or covered with vegetation.

Of such a formation are the lengthened parts of the rocky walls described by the zigzag ravine (about one thousand yards long), but the shorter parts, running in a southerly direction, present a still more interesting structure. I shall make an attempt to bring these parts before the eye and mind of the reader.

I mentioned that such a short southern passage is connected with the trough by a poort, through which the Zambezi throws its waters. The western rocky bank of the passage in which I stand begins with the western wing of the poort, a narrow acutely projecting rocky wall producing a simicircular inlet in the passage, which western bank otherwise consists of an almost perpendicular bar, and smooth, dark, rocky wall. If we observe the eastern bank opposite to me, we see that it half consists of a huge solid rock in the form of a truncated cone, partly forming the poort and trough in which the Zambezi falls, covered in its two upper-thirds with the most luxuriant tropical vegetation; it is so fairy-like, and beautiful, that it appears like, what I imagine, the suspended gardens of Semiramis must have been. A pity it is that the trees and rocky steps of this massive natural tower are not inhabited by other animals besides monkeys and birds, so as to bring the fictitious picture of the “Past” more vividly before the enchanted eye. Adjoining this rocky tower we see a round inlet, formed by two cliffs running down to the bottom of the ravine.

We find a rock similarly shaped, but more square, at the second point of the zigzag. It forms the western bank of the southern