Without doubt, the Victoria Falls constitute one of the most spectacular natural wonders of the world. As you stand by the waters of the mighty Zambezi and watch it gently flow over the edge of a seventeen hundred metre wide basalt lip, you could not be mistaken for thinking that it was here that God decided to reveal his might and glory in this great and magical land of Africa. You stare in awe as your eye follows a little rivulet of water that timidly dances alone in the sunlight before the Almighty lets it kiss its aquiline partners one last time and then sends it tumbling on a headlong plunge down into the misty chasm below. Here admist the cavorting rainbows, the capering cascades and the deafening roar of the largest curtain of water on earth, one feels at home with the spirit of Africa. For it was near here, on a warm morning in late November 1855, that the Scottish explorer, David Livingstone noted the following words in his diary, ‘The humorous grunt of the giant hippos could be hardly heard above the deep, distant murmur that rose from the depths of the earth and grew in volume until low tumultuous thunder throbbed continuously’. The wandering preacher had spent many months crossing the dusty Kalahari Desert, roaming through the lands of the Batawana and the Bayei until he reached the placid waters of the Zambezi. Like none before him, he recognised that the waterways of Africa were the key to unlocking the great continent and he hoped that this great river would allow him to gain access to the interior. He published his explorations under the title of ‘Missionary Travels and Researches’ and it was in these memoirs that Livingstone captured the magic of the African wilderness, painting an almost overwhelming picture of a burning landscape coloured with people ripe for conversion. And on that November morning as he paddled his canoe to a small island on the very lip over which the water rolls, he crept in awe to the extremity of the edifice and recoiled in terror, recognising that he had found an almost insurmountable obstacle in his highway to the interior. His diary continues, ‘White columns of vapour spray leaped energetically into the serene sky. The tops of the columns seemed to mingle with the clouds.

With that he returned to his guides, wondering where the vast body of water went, ‘it seemed to lose itself in the earth, disappearing into a transverse fissure only eighty feet wide’ and as a mark of respect he wandered to the edge of the abyss and decided to call the falls after his Sovereign, Queen Victoria. But as he left, and journeyed north into the malaria free lands of the naked Batonga, he probably wondered to himself whether the African guides had got it right when they selected a more suitable sobriquet for the great falls and called them ‘Mosi-O-Tunya’, or ‘the smoke that thunders’. Whatever the appellation, the effect on Victorian England was immediate, his vivid memoirs touched the heart of a nation and within a short time other adventurers came to witness for themselves the cascading natural splendour. Indeed, by the turn of the century, many hundreds of families, children and servants had made a pilgrimage to the falls. Within a few more years, modern engineering had brought its prodigality of splendours to the doorstep of the visitor, and a noted writer of the period remarked ‘as three days of comfort by rail from Capetown, or an equal time from Beira on the East Coast, landed one amid its unsurpassed glories’. The railway actually came in 1904, but did not bridge the river until the following year, when, with a feat of precision engineering, the gap between the two opposing arcs was ceremoniously closed. The awe-inspiring abyss that separated the lands of Northern and Southern Rhodesia was finally spanned and visitors from all over the world came to see the great spectacle. Poet, priest and painter alike paid pilgrimage to the placid paradise of water that had meandered through more than a thousand miles of scorched African countryside to plunge down the lip of the falls and disappear into the gorge below. The Victoria Falls Hotel, an opulent building in the grandest of colonial styles, was built in the same year that the railway arrived. It is situated in acres of private garden and overlooks the Victoria Falls Bridge and the great gorges below. From here one can watch in awe as bungi jumpers fall over one hundred metres down the world's longest natural bungi jump, towards the mighty Zambezi below.

And in the dying light of sunset, when the noises of the coming night slowly emerge and the rainbows retreat back into the tropical vegetation, take a walk out along the private roadway in the gardens of the hotel. It is then, when the night air is still hot and the stars hangs close, you feel you are walking in the footsteps of great adventurers who have travelled this way before you. It is here, amidst the scent of flowering leleshwa, where tawny vervet monkeys play along the rooftop of the elegant building and chatter about the events of the passing day that you really feel at home with the colonial spirit of Africa. You sit for a while out on the elegant verandahs, order a beer and you thank God that he has brought you to this hallowed place. And when the moon rises and the wind stops if you listen closely you can hear the loose windowpanes rattle as they tremble at the proud song of the Zambezi thundering and tumbling on its journey to the sea.

But if you listen closer still, above the awesome thunder of the sun-kissed column of water, you can hear another song. It is the song of the long-suffering people of Zimbabwe, those that have survived pestilence and war and who now face an uncertain future in this troubled land that God has blessed so dearly.