6+Victoria+Falls

**__Victoria Falls in Africa__ //Rachel//**



** My wonder of the world is called Victoria Falls or **** Mosi-oa-Tunya. Mosi-oa-Tunya, meaning “The smoke that thunders”, is a name given by the Makololo Tribe; it was gi **** ven that name because of t **** he gigantic amount of sound and mist generated by the falls. Sometimes, from the mist, you may see a rainbow in the day or a “moon bow” when there is a full **** moon. The falls are located on the Zambezi River on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border in souther **** n Africa. When David Livingstone found these falls on November 17th, 1855, he named them after Queen Victoria of England. He now has an island named after him called Livingstone Island. He thought some of the falls were so magnificent that he once said, “No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It has never been seen before by Europeans eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.” ** In the national parks there are many animals including many elephants, giraffes, buffalo, and two white rhinos imported from South Africa. But on the actual river itself, there are a fairly large amount of hippos. The earliest people to be known around the falls were the Khoisan hunter-gatherers (Bushmen) later followed by the Makololo, who lived near the falls in the 1800’s, gave the name Mosi-oa-Tunya to the falls. ** Pictures from: [], [], and []
 * Usually the volume of the water is between 300-3000 cubic meters per second. The large mass of mist can be felt and seen from up to a few miles away. In the falls there are a series of gorges further downstream. Victoria Falls is the lar **** gest single sheet of water being roughly one mile in width and up to 420 feet high. This makes these magnificent falls over twice the height of Niagara Falls. The falls have a few named sections which include The Devil’s Cataract, The Main Falls, The Horseshoe Falls, and The Rainbow Falls. Victoria Falls is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, UNESCO stands for United Nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization. These famous falls are part of two national parks which are the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park in Zambia and Victoria Falls National Park in Zimbabwe.