A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries

We landed at the head of Garden Island, which is situated near the middle of the river and on the lip of the Falls.  On reaching that lip, and peering over the giddy height, the wondrous and unique character of the magnificent cascade at once burst upon us.

It is rather a hopeless task to endeavour to convey an idea of it in words, since, as was remarked on the spot, an accomplished painter, even by a number of views, could but impart a faint impression of the glorious scene.  The probable mode of its formation may perhaps help to the conception of its peculiar shape.  Niagara has been formed by a wearing back of the rock over which the river falls; and during a long course of ages, it has gradually receded, and left a broad, deep, and pretty straight trough in front.  It goes on wearing back daily, and may yet discharge the lakes from which its river—the St. Lawrence—flows.  But the Victoria Falls have been formed by a crack right across the river, in the hard, black, basaltic rock which there formed the bed of the Zambesi.  The lips of the crack are still quite sharp, save about three feet of the edge over which the river rolls.  The walls go sheer down from the lips without any projecting crag, or symptoms of stratification or dislocation.  When the mighty rift occurred, no change of level took place in the two parts of the bed of the river thus rent asunder, consequently, in coming down the river to Garden Island, the water suddenly disappears, and we see the opposite side of the cleft, with grass and trees growing where once the river ran, on the same level as that part of its bed on which we sail.  The first crack is, in length, a few yards more than the breadth of the Zambesi, which by measurement we found to be a little over 1860 yards, but this number we resolved to retain as indicating the year in which the Fall was for the first time carefully examined.  The main stream here runs nearly north and south, and the cleft across it is nearly east and west.  The depth of the rift was measured by lowering a line, to the end of which a few bullets and a foot of white cotton cloth were tied.  One of us lay with his head over a projecting crag, and watched the descending calico, till, after his companions had paid out 310 feet, the weight rested on a sloping projection, probably 50 feet from the water below, the actual bottom being still further down.  The white cloth now appeared the size of a crown-piece.  On measuring the width of this deep cleft by sextant, it was found at Garden Island, its narrowest part, to be eighty yards, and at its broadest somewhat more.  Into this chasm, of twice the depth of Niagara-fall, the river, a full mile wide, rolls with a deafening roar; and this is Mosi-oa-tunya, or the Victoria Falls.

Looking from Garden Island, down to the bottom of the abyss, nearly half a mile of water, which has fallen over that portion of the Falls to our right, or west of our point of view, is seen collected in a narrow channel twenty or thirty yards wide, and flowing at exactly right angles to its previous course, to our left; while the other half, or that which fell over the eastern portion of the Falls, is seen in the left of the narrow channel below, coming towards our right.  Both waters unite midway, in a fearful boiling whirlpool, and find an outlet by a crack situated at right angles to the fissure of the Falls.  This outlet is about 1170 yards from the western end of the chasm, and some 600 from its eastern end; the whirlpool is at its commencement.  The Zambesi, now apparently not more than twenty or thirty yards wide, rushes and surges south, through the narrow escape-channel for 130 yards; then enters a second chasm somewhat deeper, and nearly parallel with the first.  Abandoning the bottom of the eastern half of this second chasm to the growth of large trees, it turns sharply off to the west, and forms a promontory, with the escape-channel at its point, of 1170 yards long, and 416 yards broad at the base.  After reaching this base, the river runs abruptly round the head of another promontory, and flows away to the east, in a third chasm; then glides round a third promontory, much narrower than the rest, and away back to the west, in a fourth chasm; and we could see in the distance that it appeared to round still another promontory, and bend once more in another chasm towards the east.  In this gigantic, zigzag, yet narrow trough, the rocks are all so sharply cut and angular, that the idea at once arises that the hard basaltic trap must have been riven into its present shape by a force acting from beneath, and that this probably took place when the ancient inland seas were let off by similar fissures nearer the ocean.

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 colour, now sorely compressed, gliding away, at least 400 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 vapour.  But as, at Niagara, one has to go over to the Canadian shore to see the chief wonder—the Great Horse-shoe Fall—so here we have to cross over to Moselekatsé’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, upwards of 310 feet in depth.  Then Boaruka, a small island, intervenes, and next comes a great fall, with a breadth of 573 yards; a projecting rock separates this from a second grand fall of 325 yards broad; in all, upwards of 900 yards of perennial Falls.  Further 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.

The whole body of water rolls clear over, quite unbroken; but, after a descent of ten or more feet, the entire mass suddenly becomes like a huge sheet of driven snow.  Pieces of water leap off it in the form of comets with tails streaming behind, till the whole snowy sheet becomes myriads of rushing, leaping, aqueous comets.  This peculiarity was not observed by Charles Livingstone at Niagara, and here it happens, possibly from the dryness of the atmosphere, or whatever the cause may be which makes every drop of Zambesi water appear to possess a sort of individuality.  It runs off the ends of the paddles, and glides in beads along the smooth surface, like drops of quicksilver on a table.  Here we see them in a conglomeration, each with a train of pure white vapour, racing down till lost in clouds of spray.  A stone dropped in became less and less to the eye, and at last disappeared in the dense mist below.

Charles Livingstone had seen Niagara, and gave Mosi-oa-tunya the palm, though now at the end of a drought, and the river at its very lowest.  Many feel a disappointment on first seeing the great American Falls, but Mosi-oa-tunya is so strange, it must ever cause wonder.  In the amount of water, Niagara probably excels, though not during the months when the Zambesi is in flood.  The vast body of water, separating in the comet-like forms described, necessarily encloses in its descent a large volume of air, which, forced into the cleft, to an unknown depth, rebounds, and rushes up loaded with vapour to form the three or even six columns, as if of steam, visible at the Batoka village Moachemba, twenty-one miles distant.  On attaining a height of 200, or at most 300 feet from the level of the river above the cascade, this vapour becomes condensed into a perpetual shower of fine rain.  Much of the spray, rising to the west of Garden Island, falls on the grove of evergreen trees opposite; and from their leaves, heavy drops are for ever falling, to form sundry little rills, which, in running down the steep face of rock, are blown off and turned back, or licked off their perpendicular bed, up into the column from which they have just descended.

The morning sun gilds these columns of watery smoke with all the glowing colours of double or treble rainbows.  The evening sun, from a hot yellow sky, imparts a sulphureous hue, and gives one the impression that the yawning gulf might resemble the mouth of the bottomless pit.  No bird sits and sings on the branches of the grove of perpetual showers, or ever builds its nest there.  We saw hornbills and flocks of little black weavers flying across from the mainland to the islands, and from the islands to the points of the promontories and back again, but they uniformly shunned the region of perpetual rain, occupied by the evergreen grove.  The sunshine, elsewhere in this land so overpowering, never penetrates the deep gloom of that shade.  In the presence of the strange Mosi-oa-tunya, we can sympathize with those who, when the world was young, peopled earth, air, and river, with beings not of mortal form.  Sacred to what deity would be this awful chasm and that dark grove, over which hovers an ever-abiding “pillar of cloud”?

The ancient Batoka chieftains used Kazeruka, now Garden Island, and Boaruka, the island further west, also on the lip of the Falls, as sacred spots for worshipping the Deity.  It is no wonder that under the cloudy columns, and near the brilliant rainbows, with the ceaseless roar of the cataract, with the perpetual flow, as if pouring forth from the hand of the Almighty, their souls should be filled with reverential awe.  It inspired wonder in the native mind throughout the interior.  Among the first questions asked by Sebituané of Mr. Oswell and Dr. Livingstone, in 1851, was, “Have you any smoke soundings in your country,” and “what causes the smoke to rise for ever so high out of water?”  In that year its fame was heard 200 miles off, and it was approached within two days; but it was seen by no European till 1855, when Dr. Livingstone visited it on his way to the East Coast.  Being then accompanied as far as this Fall by Sekeletu and 200 followers, his stay was necessarily short; and the two days there were employed in observations for fixing the geographical position of the place, and turning the showers, that at times sweep from the columns of vapour across the island, to account, in teaching the Makololo arboriculture, and making that garden from which the natives named the island; so that he did not visit the opposite sides of the cleft, nor see the wonderful course of the river beyond the Falls.  The hippopotami had destroyed the trees which were then planted; and, though a strong stockaded hedge was made again, and living orange-trees, cashew-nuts, and coffee seeds put in afresh, we fear that the perseverance of the hippopotami will overcome the obstacle of the hedge.  It would require a resident missionary to rear European fruit-trees.  The period at which the peach and apricot come into blossom is about the end of the dry season, and artificial irrigation is necessary.  The Batoka, the only arboriculturists in the country, rear native fruit-trees alone—the mosibe, the motsikiri, the boma, and others.  When a tribe takes an interest in trees, it becomes more attached to the spot on which they are planted, and they prove one of the civilizing influences.

Where one Englishman goes, others are sure to follow.  Mr. Baldwin, a gentleman from Natal, succeeded in reaching the Falls guided by his pocket-compass alone.  On meeting the second subject of Her Majesty, who had ever beheld the greatest of African wonders, we found him a sort of prisoner at large.  He had called on Mashotlané to ferry him over to the north side of the river, and, when nearly over, he took a bath, by jumping in and swimming ashore.  “If,” said Mashotlané, “he had been devoured by one of the crocodiles which abound there, the English would have blamed us for his death.  He nearly inflicted a great injury upon us, therefore, we said, he must pay a fine.”  As Mr. Baldwin had nothing with him wherewith to pay, they were taking care of him till he should receive beads from his wagon, two days distant.

Mashotlané’s education had been received in the camp of Sebituané, where but little regard was paid to human life.  He was not yet in his prime, and his fine open countenance presented to us no indication of the evil influences which unhappily, from infancy, had been at work on his mind.  The native eye was more penetrating than ours; for the expression of our men was, “He has drunk the blood of men—you may see it in his eyes.”  He made no further difficulty about Mr. Baldwin; but the week after we left he inflicted a severe wound on the head of one of his wives with his rhinoceros-horn club.  She, being of a good family, left him, and we subsequently met her and another of his wives proceeding up the country.

The ground is strewn with agates for a number of miles above the Falls; but the fires, which burn off the grass yearly, have injured most of those on the surface.  Our men were delighted to hear that they do as well as flints for muskets; and this with the new ideas of the value of gold (dalama) and malachite, that they had acquired at Tette, made them conceive that we were not altogether silly in picking up and looking at stones.

Marching up the river, we crossed the Lekoné at its confluence, about eight miles above the island Kalai, and went on to a village opposite the Island Chundu.  Nambowé, the headman, is one of the Matebelé or Zulus, who have had to flee from the anger of Moselekatsé, to take refuge with the Makololo.

We spent Sunday, the 12th, at the village of Molelé, a tall old Batoka, who was proud of having formerly been a great favourite with Sebituané.  In coming hither we passed through patches of forest abounding in all sorts of game.  The elephants’ tusks, placed over graves, are now allowed to decay, and the skulls, which the former Batoka stuck on poles to ornament their villages, not being renewed, now crumble into dust.  Here the famine, of which we had heard, became apparent, Molelé’s people being employed in digging up the tsitla root out of the marshes, and cutting out the soft core of the young palm-trees, for food.

The village, situated on the side of a wooded ridge, commands an extensive view of a great expanse of meadow and marsh lying along the bank of the river.  On these holmes herds of buffaloes and waterbucks daily graze in security, as they have in the reedy marshes a refuge into which they can run on the approach of danger.  The pretty little tianyane or ourebi is abundant further on, and herds of blue weldebeests or brindled gnus (Katoblepas Gorgon) amused us by their fantastic capers.  They present a much more ferocious aspect than the lion himself, but are quite timid.  We never could, by waving a red handkerchief, according to the prescription, induce them to venture near to us.  It may therefore be that the red colour excites their fury only when wounded or hotly pursued.  Herds of lechee or lechwé now enliven the meadows; and they and their younger brother, the graceful poku, smaller, and of a rounder contour, race together towards the grassy fens.  We venture to call the poku after the late Major Vardon, a noble-hearted African traveller; but fully anticipate that some aspiring Nimrod will prefer that his own name should go down to posterity on the back of this buck.

Midway between Tabacheu and the Great Falls the streams begin to flow westward.  On the other side they begin to flow east.  Large round masses of granite, somewhat like old castles, tower aloft about the Kalomo.  The country is an elevated plateau, and our men knew and named the different plains as we passed them by.

On the 13th we met a party from Sekeletu, who was now at Sesheké.  Our approach had been reported, and they had been sent to ask the Doctor what the price of a horse ought to be; and what he said, that they were to give and no more.  In reply they were told that by their having given nine large tusks for one horse before the Doctor came, the Griquas would naturally imagine that the price was already settled.  It was exceedingly amusing to witness the exact imitation they gave of the swagger of a certain white with whom they had been dealing, and who had, as they had perceived, evidently wished to assume an air of indifference.  Holding up the head and scratching the beard it was hinted might indicate not indifference, but vermin.  It is well that we do not always know what they say about us.  The remarks are often not quite complimentary, and resemble closely what certain white travellers say about the blacks.

We made our camp in the afternoon abreast of the large island called Mparira, opposite the mouth of the Chobé.  Francolins, quails, and guinea-fowls, as well as larger game, were abundant.  The Makololo headman, Mokompa, brought us a liberal present; and in the usual way, which is considered politeness, regretted he had no milk, as his cows were all dry.  We got some honey here from the very small stingless bee, called, by the Batoka, moandi, and by others, the kokomatsané.  This honey is slightly acid, and has an aromatic flavour.  The bees are easily known from their habit of buzzing about the eyes, and tickling the skin by sucking it as common flies do.  The hive has a tube of wax like a quill, for its entrance, and is usually in the hollows of trees.

Mokompa feared that the tribe was breaking up, and lamented the condition into which they had fallen in consequence of Sekeletu’s leprosy; he did not know what was to become of them.  He sent two canoes to take us up to Sesheké; his best canoe had taken ivory up to the chief, to purchase goods of some native traders from Benguela.  Above the Falls the paddlers always stand in the canoes, using long paddles, ten feet in length, and changing from side to side without losing the stroke.

Mochokotsa, a messenger from Sekeletu, met us on the 17th, with another request for the Doctor to take ivory and purchase a horse.  He again declined to interfere.  None were to come up to Sekeletu but the Doctor; and all the men who had had smallpox at Tette, three years ago, were to go back to Moshobotwané, and he would sprinkle medicine over them, to drive away the infection, and prevent it spreading in the tribe.  Mochokotsa was told to say to Sekeletu that the disease was known of old to white men, and we even knew the medicine to prevent it; and, were there any danger now, we should be the first to warn him of it.  Why did not he go himself to have Moshobotwané sprinkle medicine to drive away his leprosy.  We were not afraid of his disease, nor of the fever that had killed the teachers and many Makololo at Linyanti.  As this attempt at quarantine was evidently the suggestion of native doctors to increase their own importance, we added that we had no food, and would hunt next day for game, and the day after; and, should we be still ordered purification by their medicine, we should then return to our own country.

The message was not all of our dictation, our companions interlarded it with their own indignant protests, and said some strong things in the Tette dialect about these “doctor things” keeping them back from seeing their father; when to their surprise Mochokotsa told them he knew every word they were saying, as he was of the tribe Bazizulu, and defied them to deceive him by any dialect, either of the Mashona on the east, or of the Mambari on the west.  Mochokotsa then repeated our message twice, to be sure that he had it every word, and went back again.  These chiefs’ messengers have most retentive memories; they carry messages of considerable length great distances, and deliver them almost word for word.  Two or three usually go together, and when on the way the message is rehearsed every night, in order that the exact words may be kept to.  One of the native objections to learning to write is, that these men answer the purpose of transmitting intelligence to a distance as well as a letter would; and, if a person wishes to communicate with any one in the town, the best way to do so is either to go to or send for him.  And as for corresponding with friends very far off, that is all very well for white people, but the blacks have no friends to whom to write.  The only effective argument for the learning to read is, that it is their duty to know the revelation from their Father in Heaven, as it stands in the Book.

Our messenger returned on the evening of the following day with “You speak truly,” says Sekeletu, “the disease is old, come on at once, do not sleep in the path; for I am greatly desirous (tlologelecoe) to see the Doctor.”

After Mochokotsa left us, we met some of Mokompa’s men bringing back the ivory, as horses were preferred to the West-Coast goods.  They were the bearers of instructions to Mokompa, and as these instructions illustrate the government of people who have learned scarcely anything from Europeans, they are inserted, though otherwise of no importance.  Mashotlané had not behaved so civilly to Mr. Baldwin as Sekeletu had ordered him to do to all Englishmen.  He had been very uncivil to the messengers sent by Moselekatsé with letters from Mr. Moffat, treated them as spies, and would not land to take the bag until they moved off.  On our speaking to him about this, he justified his conduct on the plea that he was set at the Falls for the very purpose of watching these, their natural enemies; and how was he to know that they had been sent by Mr. Moffat?  Our men thereupon reported at head-quarters that Mashotlané had cursed the Doctor.  The instructions to Mokompa, from Sekeletu, were to “go and tell Mashotlané that he had offended greatly.  He had not cursed Monaré (Dr. Livingstone) but Sebituané, as Monaré was now in the place of Sebituané, and he reverenced him as he had done his father.  Any fine taken from Mr. Baldwin was to be returned at once, as he was not a Boer but an Englishman.  Sekeletu was very angry, and Mokompa must not conceal the message.”

On finding afterwards that Mashotlané’s conduct had been most outrageous to the Batoka, Sekeletu sent for him to come to Sesheké, in order that he might have him more under his own eye; but Mashotlané, fearing that this meant the punishment of death, sent a polite answer, alleging that he was ill and unable to travel.  Sekeletu tried again to remove Mashotlané from the Falls, but without success.  In theory the chief is absolute and quite despotic; in practice his authority is limited, and he cannot, without occasionally putting refractory headmen to death, force his subordinates to do his will.

Except the small rapids by Mparira island, near the mouth of the Chobé, the rest of the way to Sesheké by water is smooth.  Herds of cattle of two or three varieties graze on the islands in the river: the Batoka possessed a very small breed of beautiful shape, and remarkably tame, and many may still be seen; a larger kind, many of which have horns pendent, and loose at the roots; and a still larger sort, with horns of extraordinary dimensions,—apparently a burden for the beast to carry.  This breed was found in abundance at Lake Ngami.  We stopped at noon at one of the cattle-posts of Mokompa, and had a refreshing drink of milk.  Men of his standing have usually several herds placed at different spots, and the owner visits each in turn, while his head-quarters are at his village.  His son, a boy of ten, had charge of the establishment during his father’s absence.  According to Makololo ideas, the cattle-post is the proper school in which sons should be brought up.  Here they receive the right sort of education—the knowledge of pasture and how to manage cattle.

Strong easterly winds blow daily from noon till midnight, and continue till the October or November rains set in.  Whirlwinds, raising huge pillars of smoke from burning grass and weeds, are common in the forenoon.  We were nearly caught in an immense one.  It crossed about twenty yards in front of us, the wind apparently rushing into it from all points of the compass.  Whirling round and round in great eddies, it swept up hundreds of feet into the air a continuous dense dark cloud of the black pulverized soil, mixed with dried grass, off the plain.  Herds of the new antelopes, lechwé, and poku, with the kokong, or gnus, and zebras stood gazing at us as we passed.  The mirage lifted them at times halfway to the clouds, and twisted them and the clumps of palms into strange unearthly forms.  The extensive and rich level plains by the banks, along the sides of which we paddled, would support a vast population, and might be easily irrigated from the Zambesi.  If watered, they would yield crops all the year round, and never suffer loss by drought.  The hippopotamus is killed here with long lance-like spears.  We saw two men, in a light canoe, stealing noiselessly down on one of these animals thought to be asleep; but it was on the alert, and they had quickly to retreat.  Comparatively few of these animals now remain between Sesheké and the Falls, and they are uncommonly wary, as it is certain death for one to be caught napping in the daytime.

On the 18th we entered Sesheké.  The old town, now in ruins, stands on the left bank of the river.  The people have built another on the same side, a quarter of a mile higher up, since their headman Moriantsiané was put to death for bewitching the chief with leprosy.  Sekeletu was on the right bank, near a number of temporary huts.  A man hailed us from the chiefs quarters, and requested us to rest under the old Kotla, or public meeting-place tree.  A young Makololo, with the large thighs which Zulus and most of this tribe have, crossed over to receive orders from the chief, who had not shown himself to the people since he was affected with leprosy.  On returning he ran for Mokelé, the headman of the new town, who, after going over to Sekeletu, came back and conducted us to a small but good hut, and afterwards brought us a fine fat ox, as a present from the chief.  “This is a time of hunger,” he said, “and we have no meat, but we expect some soon from the Barotsé Valley.”  We were entirely out of food when we reached Sesheké.  Never was better meat than that of the ox Sekeletu sent, and infinitely above the flesh of all kinds of game is beef!

A constant stream of visitors rolled in on us the day after our arrival.  Several of them, who had suffered affliction during the Doctor’s absence, seemed to be much affected on seeing him again.  All were in low spirits.  A severe drought had cut off the crops, and destroyed the pasture of Linyanti, and the people were scattered over the country in search of wild fruits, and the hospitality of those whose ground-nuts (Arachis hypogœa) had not failed.  Sekeletu’s leprosy brought troops of evils in its train.  Believing himself bewitched, he had suspected a number of his chief men, and had put some, with their families, to death; others had fled to distant tribes, and were living in exile.  The chief had shut himself up, and allowed no one to come into his presence but his uncle Mamiré.  Ponwané, who had been as “head and eyes” to him, had just died; evidence, he thought, of the potent spells of those who hated all who loved the chief.  The country was suffering grievously, and Sebituané’s grand empire was crumbling to pieces.  A large body of young Barotsé had revolted and fled to the north; killing a man by the way, in order to put a blood-feud between Masiko, the chief to whom they were going, and Sekeletu.  The Batoka under Sinamané, and Muemba, were independent, and Mashotlané at the Falls was setting Sekeletu’s authority virtually at defiance.  Sebituané’s wise policy in treating the conquered tribes on equal terms with his own Makololo, as all children of the chief, and equally eligible to the highest honours, had been abandoned by his son, who married none but Makololo women, and appointed to office none but Makololo men.  He had become unpopular among the black tribes, conquered by the spear but more effectually won by the subsequent wise and just government of his father.

Strange rumours were afloat respecting the unseen Sekeletu; his fingers were said to have grown like eagle’s claws, and his face so frightfully distorted that no one could recognize him.  Some had begun to hint that he might not really be the son of the great Sebituané, the founder of the nation, strong in battle, and wise in the affairs of state.  “In the days of the Great Lion” (Sebituané), said his only sister, Moriantsiané’s widow, whose husband Sekeletu had killed, “we had chiefs and little chiefs and elders to carry on the government, and the great chief, Sebituané, knew them all, and everything they did, and the whole country was wisely ruled; but now Sekeletu knows nothing of what his underlings do, and they care not for him, and the Makololo power is fast passing away.” ³