The migratory springbucks of South Africa (the trekbokke) : also an essay on the ostrich and a letter descriptive of the Zambesi Falls / by C.S. Cronwright-Schreiner.

  • Cronwright-Schreiner, S. C. (Samuel C.), 1863-1936.
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The migratory springbucks of South Africa (the trekbokke) : also an essay on the ostrich and a letter descriptive of the Zambesi Falls / by C.S. Cronwright-Schreiner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    stand on a strip of rock, in some parts bare, in others grass-covered, perpetually swept by the wind created by the Falls and drenched at short intervals by the heavy showers from the “ smoke.” Listen to the roar ! See the Falls opposite as the wind, created by them, sweeps at times the heavy spray away ! See and feel the mysterious “ smoke-” laden wind tearing straight up from God knows where ! Feel the angry rain hurled on you ! The elements are at strife; there is the beginning and the end of things, and you are in it; you are part of it—a vibrant atom in the titanic forces. It is elemental, cataclysmic. Then go down to the Falls at night and see the unearthly lunar rainbow in the white moonlight, one end on the brink of the Falls, the other lost in the dark at the bottom of the Chasm. See its still arc, rigid as steel, curving over the restless waters, superb in its brilliant yet delicate colours, rising into the clearer air at the top, buttressed against the brink where the spray begins. See, as I did, the fairies and pixies and other “ little people ” sliding up and down the heavenly curve, dodging one another round its glittering arc ! You will then know it is scarcely possible that earth can hold any- thing else so grand, so awe-fully beautiful, as that mile-wide river plunging into “ the dark, un- bottomed, infinite abyss,” foaming and tearing from both ends to the Boiling Pot, mightily crushing through the narrow Gorge. I want to stand in a