Livingstone had pursued it far up toward its source, and knew whence it came; and now he resolved to follow it down to the sea, trusting that it would furnish a water communication into the very heart of the continent.

It was now October—­the close of the hot season.  The thermometer stood at 100 Deg. in the shade; in the sun it sometimes rose to 130 Deg.  During the day the people kept close in their huts, guzzling a kind of beer called ‘boyola’, and seeming to enjoy the copious perspiration which it induces.  As evening set in the dance began, which was kept up in the moonlight till long after midnight.  Sekeletu, proud of his new uniform, and pleased with the prospect of trade which had been opened, entertained Livingstone hospitably, and promised to fit him out for his eastern journey as soon as the rains had commenced, and somewhat cooled the burning soil.

He set out early in November, the chief with a large body of retainers accompanying him as far as the Falls of Mosioatunye, the most remarkable piece of natural scenery in all Africa, which no European had ever seen or heard of.  The Zambesi, here a thousand yards broad, seems all at once to lose itself in the earth.  It tumbles into a fissure in the hard basaltic rock, running at a right-angle with the course of the stream, and prolonged for thirty miles through the hills.  This fissure, hardly eighty feet broad, with sides perfectly perpendicular, is fully a hundred feet in depth down to the surface of the water, which shows like a white thread at its bottom.  The noise made by the descent of such a mass of water into this seething abyss is heard for miles, and five distinct columns of vapor rise like pillars of smoke to an enormous height.  Hence the Makololo name for the cataract, ’Mosi oa tunye’—­“Smoke sounds there!”—­for which Livingstone, with questionable taste, proposes to substitute the name of “Victoria Falls”—­a change which we trust the world will not sanction.

From these falls the country gradually ascends toward the east, the river finding its way by this deep fissure through the hills.  Every thing shows that this whole region, for hundreds of miles, was once the bed of an immense fresh-water lake.  By some convulsion of nature, occurring at a period geologically recent, this fissure was formed, and through it the lake was drained, with the exception of its deepest part, which constitutes the present Lake Ngami.  Similar indications exist of the former existence of other immense bodies of water, which have in like manner been drained by fissures through the surrounding elevations, leaving shallow lakes at the lowest points.  Such are, undoubtedly, Tsad at the north, Ngami at the south, Dilolo at the west, and Taganyika and Nyanja, of which we have only vague reports, at the east.  This great lake region of former days seems to have extended 2500 miles from north to south, with an average breadth, from east to west, of 600 or 700 miles.