Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1905-06-13
A WoRLu WONDER.
The Victoria Cataract ls Like no 9th
er Falls on Earth.

The Zambesi valley, for 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 somber basaltic rock, all
thoroughly uninteresting. The herb
age Is but family green, and the trop-
ical 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 element
we always unconsciously seek in a ma
ture picture-life. The absence OF this
produces in the mind q feeling OF lone
illness and often Of fear. Across this
solemn scene appears river that IN
flood time Is perhaps half mile Wide.
If deaf man were following down one
of it's banks he would notice little but
the quiet water and the odd looking
column of smoke ahead. AS this COL
umn was approached, he would expect
to see the river banks bending and the
water flowing away to one side OF the
conflagration, 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 1t should be, Is only the
brown plain. as lonely, brush covered
and monotonous as ever. One must
go twenty miles farther before the
vanished water and the surface Of the
land commingle. before 1t will be pos
sible to walk along the bank In COM
pany with the river So sudden and
startling is the transformation.
Meantime the pillar Of smoke has re-
solved itself into a dense mist forced
upward in terrible puffs from the
yawning cash stretching directly
across the bed Of the river. This fear
full abyss Is every second swallowing
thousands Of tons Of green and white
water, and belching up blasts Of mist
that rise hundreds of feet into the air
and hurry away with the winds as II
rejoicing at their escape from the In
ferno below. And somewhere, nearly
four hundred feet below, the entrapped
river Is fighting its way between sheer
walls of black rock toward a narrow
cleft In the eastern wall, whence 1t es-
capes, foaming and boiling. through the
zigzags and curves of a deep gorge
leading off to the eastward. One goes
to an edge of this delivering chasm,
and looks down upon the tossing wa
ters ever pressed from behind by 9TH
er floods struggling out Of the narrow
black gateway; and perhaps the most
prominent mental sensation is that OF
thankfulness that even in such grim
and CHASTITY way nature has provided
a means by which the fearful slit Of q
throat above that has swallowed the
stream can disgorge it again without
causing an overwhelming catastrophe.
The Victoria cataract should be WIS.,
tied at least twice before one Is COM
petent to pass an opinion upon It,
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 a noise as Of mountains
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 long.
creamy film Of lovely lace; the rising
mists flow softly away through the lit
tie rain forest below the cavern's lip;
the gigantic vault itself becomes a
wonderful spectacle, a dream Of natu-