We have seen how genuine his respect was
for his Sovereign, and it was doubtless a real though quiet pleasure to
connect her name with the grandest natural phenomenon in Africa, This is
one of the discoveries[43] that have taken most hold on the popular
imagination, for the Victoria Falls are like a second Niagara, but
grander and more astonishing; but except as illustrating his views of
the structure of Africa, and the distribution of its waters, it had not
much influence, and led to no very remarkable results. Right across the
channel of the river was a deep fissure only eighty feet wide, into
which the whole volume of the river, a thousand yards broad, tumbled to
the depth of a hundred feet[44], the fissure being continued in zigzag
form for thirty miles, so that the stream had to change its course from
right to left and left to right, and went through the hills boiling and
roaring, sending up columns of steam, formed by the compression of the
water falling into its narrow wedge-shaped receptacle.
[Footnote 43: Virtually a discovery, though marked in an old map.
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