File:Mosioatunya.jpg

English: The Victoria Falls, of the Leeambye or Zambesi River, Called by the Natives Mosioatunya (Smoke Sounding). "We proceeded next morning, 9th August, 1860, to see the Victoria Falls. Mosi-oa-tunya is the Makololo name, and means smoke sounding. . . . We embarked in canoes. . . . 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. . . . 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. . . . 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. . . . The whole body of water rolls clear over, quite unbroken; but after a descent of ten or more feet, the entire mass becomes like a huge sheet of driven snow. . . . 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 shower of perpetual rain. . . . The morning sun gilds these columns of watery smoke with all the glowing colours of double or treble rainbows." [This description of the falls is from Livingtone’s Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi (1865), pp. 250-57.]