Victoria Falls

The Victoria Falls, one of the world's "natural wonders," are situated on the Zambezi River, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Vastly larger than North America's Niagara Falls, the Victoria Falls are rivaled only by South America's Iguazu Falls in volume. While Iguazu is divided into over 270 relatively "small" falls and cataracts, Victoria Falls is 1.06 miles wide, making it the largest curtain of water in the world. It drops between 295 feet and 355 feet into the Zambezi Gorge and an average of 1.804 million cubic feet of water plummeting over the edge every minute.

First seen by a European, Scottish missionary-explorer David Livingstone, in 1885, they are also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The falls are considered a remarkable spectacle because of the peculiar, narrow, slot-like chasm into which the water falls, so one can view the falls face-on. The falls are part of two national parks, Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park in Zambia and Victoria Falls National Park in Zimbabwe. The Falls are one of Southern Africa's major tourist attractions.

History

The earliest known inhabitants of the area around Victoria Falls were Khoisan hunter-gatherers (bushmen). They were followed by Tokaleya people, who called the falls Shongwe. Later, the Ndebele named them aManza Thunqayo, and the Makololo called them Mosi-oa-Tunya, meaning "The smoke that thunders."

The first European to see the falls was David Livingstone on November 17, 1855, during his 1852-1856 journey from the upper Zambezi to the mouth of the river. Livingstone reached the Falls from upriver and rowed across to a small island that now bears the name Livingstone Island. Livingstone had previously been impressed by the Ngonye Falls further upstream, but found the new falls much more impressive, and named them after Queen Victoria. He wrote of the falls "No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."

In 1860, Livingstone returned to the area and made a detailed study of the falls with the explorer John Kirk. Other early European visitors included Portuguese explorer Serpa Pinto; Czech explorer Emil Holub, who made the first detailed plan of the falls and its surroundings in 1875 (published in 1880); and British artist Thomas Baines, who executed some of the earliest paintings of the falls. Until the area was opened up by the building of the railway in 1905, however, the falls were seldom visited by other Europeans.

The falls

The falls lie about midway down the course of the Zambezi. For a considerable distance above the falls, the Zambezi flows over a level sheet of basalt, in a valley bounded by low and distant sandstone hills. The river's course is dotted with numerous, tree-clad islands, which increase in number as the river approaches the falls.

The falls are formed as the Zambezi plummets into a narrow chasm about 400 feet wide, carved by its waters along a fracture zone in the earth's crust. Numerous islets at the crest of the falls divide the water to form a series of falls.

The falls are extremely broad at about 1.06 miles across, and the height of the cascade varies from 263 feet at the right bank to 354 feet in the center. This makes Victoria roughly twice the height of Niagara Falls, and well over twice the width of the horseshoe falls (Niagara's main portion). The falling water generates spray and mist that rises typically to a height of over 1312 feet (and sometimes even twice as high), and is visible from up to over 30 miles away. At full moon, a "moonbow" can be seen in the spray instead of the daylight rainbow.

During the wet season, the falls have over 19-million cubic feet of water falling over its crestline each minute, and spray from this rises several hundreds of feet into the air because of the incredible force of the falling water. The 1958 flood of the Zambezi saw the falls reach record volumes of over 27-million cubic feet per minute. This compares to the Niagara Falls which has about six million cubic feet of water passing its crestline per minute in peak flow. This compares also to the Iguazu Falls of South America in terms of of size with peak volume.

The fall is broken into four parts by islands on the lip of the precipice. Close to the right bank is a sloping cataract 35 miles wide called the Leaping Water. Then beyond the 984-foot-wide Boaruka Island is the main fall, about 1509 feet across. Livingstone Island divides the main fall from another broad channel about 1739 feet wide, while on the left bank of the river is the Eastern Cataract.

Credited to new world encyclopedia and flickr:davidkiene,RemyOmar,Zest-pk