Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1905-08-08
A WORD WONDER.
The Victoria Cataract is Like no


Other Falls on Earth.
The Zambesi Valley, for a hundred
miles or more in every direction from
the cataract is rough and broken
plateau, covered with low brush and
stunted trees, with here and there an
outcrop of somber basaltic rock, all
thcrcdghly uninteresting. The herb
age IS but family green, and the tropt
cal sky only family blue 1t is hazy
half-tone landscape, wanting in clear
cut lines in every direction, and lack
ing above everything else that ele.
ment we always unconsciously seek
in ature-picture-life The alb
sence of this produces in the mind
a feeling of loneliness and often Of
fear. Across this solemn scene ap-
pears river that in flood-time is per-
haps half a mile wide. If deaf man
were following down one of its banks,
he would notice little but the
quiet water and the odd
looking column of smoke ahead.
AS this column was approach
ed, he would expect to see the river
banks bending. and the water flowing
away to one side of the confiagration,
and might glance to the right and
left to note the direction taken. But
the panorama changes as he gazes.
The river is no more. And there,
where it should be, is only the brown
plain, as lonely, Undiscovered, and
monotonous as ever. One must go
twenty miles farther before the van
ished water and the surface of the
land again commingle, before it will
be possible to walk along the bank IL
company with the river. So sudden
and startling is the transformation.
Meantime the pillar of smoke has
resolved itself into a dense mist fore
ed upward in terrible puffs from a
yawning cash stretching directly
across the bed of the river. This
fearful abyss is every second swallow
ing thousands of tons of greenland
white water, and belching up blasts Of
mist that rise hundreds of feet into
the air and hurry away with the
winds as If rejoicing at their escape
from the inferno below And some
where, nearly four hundred feet be-
low, the entrapped river is fighting
it's way between sheer walls of black
rock toward a narrow cleft in the
eastern wall, whence it escapes, foam
ing and boiling, through the zigzags
nj nf n Loo irarr
off to the eastward. One goes to an
edge of this delivering chasm, and
looks down upon the tossing waters,
ever pressed from behind by other
floods struggling out of the narrow
black gateway, and perhaps the most
prominent mental sensation is that of
thankfulness that even in such a
grim and CHASTITY way nature has pro.
vided a means by which the fearful
slit of a throat above that has swal
lowed the stream can disgorge it
again without causing an overwhelm-
ing catastrophe.
The Victoria cataract should be Wis
tied at least twice before one is COM
When the river is in flood (July) the
scene is simply terrible. One sees
nothing but an enormous sheet of wa
ter disappearing into the bowels OF
the earth, with noise as of noun
tains falling upon one another, while
from the awful cash comes back in
fierce gusts and swirls the foaming
breath of the tortured element below.
But in December, when the water is
low, the edge of the cataract shows
as a long, creamy film of lovely lace,
the rising mist flows softly away
through the little rain forest below
she cavern's lip; the gigantic vault
Itself becomes a wonderful spectacle,
dream of neutral tints, a cave OR
beauty. Far down in its dark depths
the waters, gliding along the rocky
walls, and bending gracefully around
the corners toward the narrow outlet,
pass gaily and laughingly to freedom.
For time the demon of the catar-
act is sleeping.-From Theodore F.
Van Wagenen's "The Victoria Falls
in thn Co0tI1,v