The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-07-13

pears like a column of smoke rising
 from burning village, and during the last mile of the railway Journey the
 roar of the falling water becomes mo- ticeable. Finally, when the edge of the chasm is reached, if the river is in flood, tfTe~eye and ear are assailed by
 a combination of phenomena that prob
 ably cannot be duplicated as marvels anywhere else on the planet.
 The first question that is asked of an
 American who has seen this African
 wonder generally is, How does it
 compare with Niagara" There is no
 possibility of comparison. The two are
 as different as day and night Niagara is a perfect picture in lovely na-
 tural framework. Every point and line
 and curve of motionless rock, trembl- ing verdure and gliding water is a touch of majestic beauty Victoria is simply a phenomenon, terrific gash
 in the floor of an apparently intending
 plain, which as one. gazes simply swal-
 lows a river in a manner that produces
 almost thrill of horror. The zambezi valley for a hundred
 miles or more in every direction from the cataract is , a rough and broken
 plateau covered with low brush and stunted trees, with here and there an
 outcrop of sonlber basaltic rock, all thoroughly uninteresting. The her. bage is but faintly green and the tropi- cal sky only faintly blue. It is a hazy
 half tone landscape wanting in clear
 cut lines in every direction and lack
 ing, above everything else that ele-
 ment We always unconsciousIy seek in a nature picture-life. The absence of
 this produces in the mind feeling of loneliness and often of fear. Across this solemn scene appears a river that
 in flood time is perhaps half a mile
 wide. If a deaf man were following
 down one of its banks he would notice i little but the quiet water and the odd
 looking column of smoke ahead. As
 this column was approached he would
 expect to see the river banks bending
 and the water flowing away to one
 side, of the confiagration M 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.
 brush covered and monotonous as ever.
 0ne must go twenty miles farther be-
 lore the vanished water and the sur- race or the land again commingle, be- fore it will be possible to walk along
 the bank in company with the river, 30 sudden, is the transformation.
 Meantime the pillar of smoke has re- solved itself into a dense mist forced upward in terrible puffs from a yawn- ing gash stretching directly across the ped or the river. This fearful abyss is every second sWalling thousands of | tons Of green and white water and | oeiching up blasts of mist that rise hundreds of feet into the air and hur- ry away with the winds as if reioic- Ing at their escape from the inferno below. And somewhere, nearby 400 rect below, the entrapped river is fight ng it's way between sheer walls of black rock toward a narrow cleft in .he eastern wall. whence it escapes, banning and boiling, through the zig zagsand curves of a deep gorge leading 'tf to the eastward, One goes to an edge of this delivering chasm and ooks down upon the tossing waters. eVer pressed from behind by other foods struggling out of the narrow black gateway, and perhaps the most prominent mental sensation is that 'f thankfulness that even in such a grim and ghastly way nature has pro- 'lded means by which the fearful slit of throat above that has swaI- owed the stream can disgorge it again without causing an overwhelming cat The Victoria cataract should De visited at least twice before one is competent to pass an opinion upon it. When the river is in flood (JuIy) the scene is simply terrible. One see noth- ng but an enormous sheet of water disappearing into the bowels of the 7arth with noise as of mountains | 'alling upon one another, while from he awful gash comes back in fierce gusts and sWirls the foaming breath If the tortured element below. But in December, when the water is low the l. 2dge of the cataract shows as long, ;reanly film of lovely lace; the rising mist flows softly away through the lit- lie rain forest below the cayern's lip;