Victoria Falls The Kololo tribe living in the area in the 1800's described it as 'Mosi-oa-Tunya.' Translated this means 'the Smoke that Thunders' or 'the greatest known curtain of falling water'. In 1855, David Livingstone, a British explorer visited the falls. He named the falls after Queen Victoria. He said this of the falls: "Creeping with awe to the verge, I peered down into a large rent which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambezi, and saw that a stream of a thousand yards broad leaped down a hundred feet and then became suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen to twenty yards.... the most wonderful sight I had witnessed in Africa." -Livingstone, 1857 The falls were formed as the Zambezi plummeted into a narrow chasm along a fracture zone in the earth's crust. Numerous islets divide the water and make a series of falls. The falls have a drop of 420 feet (128 meters) and is 1.6 kilometers wide. Sprays of mist can be felt from over 546 million cubic meters away. Other Quotes: "At whatever part one looks, the rays of the sun shining on the descending masses of foam, form a double zone of prismatic colors, of whose depth and brilliancy no one who has only seen the faint tints of an ordinary rainbow can form any conception. Such are the Victoria Falls - One of, if not the most transcendentally beautiful natural phenomenon on this side of Paradise" -F.C. Selous, 1881 "A truly magnificent sight, and one which brings home the tremendous glory of the whole mighty work of Nature, and the comparative insignificance of Humanity" -P.M. Clarke, 1925 Natural Wonders >> Ancient Wonders >>