THE VICTORIA FALLS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 14296, 14 February 1907, Page 8

THE VICTORIA FALLS.

(By B. E. BAUGHAN.) The following sketch of the Victoria Falk is offered merely as a record of tho impression made by tbe sight of them upon one witness; not as any adequate description, which would teqnire not only the pen of genius, but a. spirit and an apprehension more than human, for the mingled majesty and mystery of the place are overwhelming. At first sight of it one is simply dazed and bewildered; and time, while familiarising the mind to- some extent with tho immensity of its subject, familiarises it also with a senes of its own limitations. Yon cannot set down in words thoughts which you cannot grasp; and so it ie here. This “ M et-sioa-tunya ” (“ "Water, the roaring one”), to bo apprehended, even in tho smallest degree, must be seen. All that is possible is to indicate in some degree how very worth while seeing it is. As everybody knows,' the Victoria Falls occur in the. upper course of the . Zambezi River as it flows between Northern and Southern Rhodesia. They have already been readied by the railway, and crossed by the bridge which is to carry trains forward into l Northern Rhodesia (and towards Cairo), through tho spray of the cataract. That the railway will in itself- spoil tho beauty of the place regarded as scenery only is, to say tho least of it, extremely doubtful; and there is a larger beauty which its presence decidedly enhances. For here is now tho meeting-place of two marvels; not a river only, and a bridge, but mind and matter at their greatest; Nature at the height of her

power, and Man, as it were, stretching himself to her measure.

Both above and below the Falls the landscape is possessed of no especial beauty; the country is undulating, and covered with low scrub, green during the rains, but in the dry season arid, wan and monotonous to the eye. There is no drop in the land whatever at the Falls; the country' runs on at the same level and with the same aspect, except in one salient particular. Through the part above the cataract there run, in the very driest season of the year, two parallel lines of verdure bordering a mile-wide space of water, blue and bright and placid, gliding broadly onwards through the drought, A KIND AND LIBERAL RIVER OP LIFE.

Suddenly it ends. A white wall of cloud rises upwards into the sky—and that is all. The level countryside continues, an unbroken exuanso of sand, and of low bushes; but tLero is no river to be seen. Instead, a terrible fissure zig-zags'through it, with parched and gaping lips, and so continues for a length of five-and-forty miles. What has happened to the river? This is what has happened. Suddenly, in full career, it has plunged headlong down a distance of nearly 350 ft into a narrow chasm extending across the whole breadth of its bed; and thence, hemmed In, and abruptly contracted at times to a width of no more than fifty yards, continues its course at the bottom of the zig-zag fissure, or canon, spoken of above; dark, unfathomable, and life-bringing no longer: pent between sharp and barren precipices, four hundred feet below the level of the- surrounding country, and, save for the very lips of the gorge, invisible. For desolate and naked sublimity it would be hard to match this scene —the yawning cliffs of- sheer black basalt ; trie sunken river far below', beaming no longer, but gloomy, with the colour and opaqueness of smooth olive-green marble, streaked occasionally with white: solid, rather than liquid in its look, with a movement that, viewed from above, appears sluggish, and with an under-running energy and depth before the thought of which the imagination quails. As yet, no soundings have been successfully taken of the river in the gorge, across which, immediately below' the Falls, and parallel for a distance of two hundred yards with them, the railway bridge is suspended. The savage splendour of this part of the river alone, would be sufficient recompense for his journey to any traveller w'ith a mind desirous of strong impressions. It is not hero, however, that the paramount' interest centres, hat in the straight- and narrow chasm at the 'head of this gorge, and extending across it for a short distance not only to the oast, but to_ the 1 west for nearly a mile. For that is the chasm of the Falls, into which the whole extended river, 1936 yards in width, falls headlong. IT IS BUT A .GAP IN THE EARTH, a rent almost, comparatively speaking, a trench, cut clean and sharp across the bed of the river, of -which it receives into its narrow abyss the entire volume; casting it hack from its inexorable further cliff, or driving it (violently wrested into a new direction, choking, infuriated and augmented ’ at every inch of its tempestuous course by fresh masses hurtling from above) dow r n a mile of hidden roaring struggle to the narrow' outlet of the gorge ; into the sinister calm of which it escapes at last with throes and unspeakable convulsions. No wonder that the place is forever filled with hollow thunder : that the sheer wall of falling water is dashed and powdered into spray, blown into mere breath: that a cloud of vapour covers forever the face of the chasm from the face of the sky, and the roaring channel below' remains perpetually veiled. Along the brink of the chasm opposite to that over which the river falls, it is possible to walk for almost the whole length of tne cataract—that it to say, for nearly a mile, with the thundering white water within a biscuit’s toss, and actually, though not always visibly, confronting you all the way. Upon tills cliff, and frequently upon the extreme verge of it, there runs % narrow belt of beautiful tropical, vegetation, known by the name of “The Rain-Forest,” where tall timber, palms, and undergrowth flourish in quiet luxuriance, untroubled by the tumult far beneath them, and dependent upon it for their moisture-loving life. Here you may W'ander at will, along W'atery tracks, and under dripping leaves, from time to time emerging ux>oa the open edge of the cliff into the face of the Falls. It is like standing upon some wild and rooky seashore: immediately before your feet, the cliff-top shows its margin of black basalt, rough and wet, beyond which, THROUGH VEILS OF BLINDING SPRAY, you seem to see the foaming ocean thundering and plunging towards you, but never reaching you—disappearing instead into you know not what immeasurable abyss. The scene, all involved in veering cloud, changes every minute. _ Now, beyond the opposite brink, behind the falling foam, you see the blue Zambesi gliding pleasantly between the green islands that crown with their unshuddering palms the very verge of the abyss; now it is the falling water only that you see, shooting headlong down, swift, yet stately, churned into flakes and masses of foam, yet still coherent—still, as it we-ro, in lengths'—thrusting like enormous spectral fingers, white and uncanny, down into the world of mist below. Now that view vanishes, but. looking to the right or to the left, you catch ever and again a glimpse of similar grand volleys of white water over the brink of the whole extended riverbod, till suddenly that, too, is -lost. River, islets, wavering walls of water, all are gone—swallowed from your sight in the dense clouds of spray. Nothing remains save mist and vapour, a cold wind, a waft of drenching rain, and the sense that you stand, blind and alone, upon the edge- of empty space. And is this terrifying? No! though' awful, certainly. Winter-like and dreary? Nothing less! For, from the full blue sky above, the absolute, tropical sun pours down his streams of cold, and paints the place with light. The spraywashed ferns and palms and tangled creepers glitter as with jewels; the rising spray shines bright as silver; rainbows innumerable send shafts of rose and blue and emerald through the pearly mists about the mouth of the ahves; and the WHIRLING CLOUDS OF VAPOUR rising softly from below toes continually out of darkness- into light, out, of light into darkness, continually fleet and fade), continually surge forth afresh, change continually in everything but beauty. It is a relief for the niind fatigued by the contemplation of measureless force to turn from the cataract itself and rest content awhile with this other vision of silent and tender loveliness At that extremity of the Falls chasm furthest from the point . where the Zambesi outers the gorge and resumes its onward flow, one stream of the river is somewhat separated from the main body, and forms a fall by itself, which is known as the Devil’s Cataract. Hero it is possible not only to face the water, hut to stand by the side of it at the extreme western end of the whole I chasm, and thus to look—though not. indeed, to see—down the entire length of the Falk, while obtaining, at the same time, a nearer view of the actual precipitation of the water than can he had from any other spot. To gain the i full effect it is necessary to come upon the river not at the Falls, but higher up—say, a mile or so above them. Here, smooth and peaceful, Ihe water, considerably over a mile in width, and dotted with leafy islands, floats equably between its low, green-muffled shores, unutterably placid, the light upon it

magically pure, the bending .reeds and branches On the banks perfectly reflected in the glassy calm of its waters. So, on to the very verge of the precipice it flows, tranquil and smiling; and as you stand by the side of tho Devil’s Cataract you may see the river above still circling leisurely round little mossy rocks and noiselessly washing ita banks, just like any ordinary stream SLIPPING PEACEFULLY TO SEA, Then suddenly the channel narrows, the current quickens, the water gathers itself together, as it were, sweeps ini a column of green crystal over the lip of the rock, and leaps forward, past your feet, and down, in a confusion of swirling water and foam: green flecked with white at first, then almost immediately one mass of snowy fakes and curls, now tucked and folded j* under each other, now eddying aftf boiling out again, till all is shot, tempestuous and headlong, down, into the invisible clamour below.

Only the spray remains; clouds of smoke, sunlit showers of diamonds, tossing up into the evergreen bush that overhangs the torrent on all sides; only the spray and the perfect rainbow that spans it with light incredibly brilliant as the sunlight strikes, and sparkles, upon and through the tiny fleeting beads of moisture, and turns them into gems, as radiant as, but inexpressibly more brilliant than, the hard emeralds and sapphires and rubies, to which, for want of anyt other figure, we must compare them. The black side© of the containing cliffy glisten with wet light: the grass tufts, that, together with the flat red Aloa stars contrive to draw life—who knows how?—from the hungry surface of the precipice, wave in the wind of thei over-passing avalanche—wave and toss, yet live on; little birds fly safe and unconcerned across the chasm; the palms and ferns of the surrounding bush stand green and firm and quiet. Somehow all this seems incredible: the contrast between all these little calm details, and THE STUPENDOUS FORCE, RUSHING PAST US, heard beneath us, filling every sensd with confusion, is almost too sharp. It is as though we were hidden to live in two worlds at once: in a new, justopened universe of grandeur and mystery, unforeseen, and keeping all one’s soul upon the stretch, and at the same time in the old world of familiar Everyday. Through the curtain of the rainbowed spray, from time to time wo* may catch a glimpse of the abyss, at whose corner we are standing. Black, narrow', long, every now and then it emerges into sight out of an indistinct world of rising mist, and falling mist, and mist that eddies in between. Upon the Rain Forest side, it bangs suspended above the vaporous depth like a sheer and frowning black, but streaked into white by innumerable little spray-flung cataracts, forever striving to rejoin the ■water beneath, and forever thwarted by cold gusts of wind, which rushing up from the remote depth of air disturbed by the Titanic struggles near, hear hack with them these little orphans of the River, and dissipate them again to spray. Upon the opposite, i.e., the river side of the ohasm, wo may "watch for, and intermittently perceive (from the side, now'; not as from! the Rain Forest, face to face) the vague and ghostly form® of_ snowy cataract after cataract, careering into space; and the bright course down the length of the chasm of that upper River of the Mist: here in the sunlight, of a glorious golden-white; there in’ the shadow, sombre and dun; lib by defined’ rainbows; tinted by diffused’ ones; forever flowing onward in soft volumes of violet and blue, rose emerald and gold, noiseless above the roar/ and lovely through the gloom. Far below' and beyond, meanwhile, one may occasionally catch a glimpse of the re-emerging river, tossing forward in waves of dark dull green and white. Then it, too, is SWALLOWED IN THE UNIVERSAL INDISTINCTNESS. By day, as has been said, the scend is lit and softened by abundant light. But only to see it so is not to see it at its beet. At night, and by moonlight, is the time; with every detail g one —sheer rock, and space, and water only loft. Then, w'hat w r as colour and sparkle turns all to glimmering silver; w’hat was dark is black indeed, what was deep is bottomless. In the silence of the night the thunder sounds redoubled from below. In the uncertain light the rush of the water.past one’s feet seems yet more sheer, more irresistible; in the mystery of the darkness the groping mind meets face to face the mystery of unknown and nonhuman power. The latter is, indeed, and after all, the native and supreme characteristic of the place. The setting of the Falls is lovely; in themselves they are magnificent, but the impression they convey above all to the mind is that of something superhuman and terrific, which yet doe© not terrify, and ' is not! alien. As, in a tragedy, the mind is “elevated and purified,” rather than appalled, by ’ the sight of the moral tumults of suffering and sin, so in this, Nature’s own theatre (as in the depths of the sea and among the unmoved snow-peaks), a piece is perpetually playing, which, though in ita true ease nee BEYOND ALL MORTAL COMPREHENSION, fails not of some similar effect upon the human soul that sees it, bewildered, overwhelmed, and .yet enlarged and learning. . Wo are human: our perceptions and our interests are circumscribed hy_ human ties and needs and aspirations. But w'o live wuthin a world which is not only human; there is a life about us (call it inanimate as we may), with laws and interests and • actions of its owm, and. this fact it does us more than good to realise. For to be brought squarely face to face with it, properly understand or penetrate though we cannot, is yet to be given a glimpse of majesty and glory, and of calm spaciousness beyond our own affairs, which to the soul that even dimly perceives it is infinitely quieting and ennobling.