depth of Niagara Falls, the river, a full mile wide, roars with a deafening roar; and this is Mosi-oa-tunya, or the Victoria Falls. 'Looking from Garden Island down to the bottom of the abyss, nearly half a mile of water, which has fallen over that portion of the falls to our right, or west of our point of view, is seen collected in a narrow channel twenty or thirty yards wide, and flowing at exactly right angles to its previous course to our left; while the other half, or that which fell over the eastern portion of the falls, is seen in the left of the narrow channel below, coming towards our right. Both waters unite midway, in a fearful boiling whirlpool, and find an outlet by a crack situated at right angles to the fissure of the falls. This outlet is about 1170 yards from the western end of the chasm, and some 600 from its eastern end; the whirlpool is at its commencement. The Zambesi, now apparently not more than twenty or thirty yards wide, rushes and surges south, through the narrow escape channel for 130 yards; then enters a second chasm somewhat deeper and nearly parallel with the first. Abandoning the bottom of the eastern half of the second chasm to the growth of large trees, it turns sharply off to the west, and forms a promontory, with the escape channel at its point of 1170 yards long, and 416 yards broad at the base. After reaching this base, the river In runs abruptly round the head of another promontory, much narrower than the rest, and away back to the west by a fourth chasm; and we could see in the distance that it appeared to round still another promontory, and bend once more in another chasm towards the east. this gigantic zig-zag yet narrow trough, the rocks are all so sharply cut and angular, that the idea at once arises that the hard basaltic trap must have been riven into its present shape by a force acting from beneath, and that this probably took place when the ancient inland seas were let off by similar fissures nearer the ocean.' Dr. Livingstone died much. as he had lived. There was the mystery of isolation and the grandeur of a noble purpose about his life, and in keeping with that there was a loneliness and an air of self-devotedness about his death. One may wish that he had been spared to return home, to tell his discoveries, to see the narrative of his wanderings through the press, and to receive the well-merited applause of his fellow-countrymen; but it may be questioned whether his name will not be remembered throughout all time with more of admiration from the very fact that he died at his post and in the prosecution of his la Livingstone's death to on the 1st of May 1873 in Central Africa. time previous, we are had been very weak. I his feeble strength, however, he pushed on, riding on a donkey. Then he had to be carried on a kitanda, or bedstead; but soon after passing Ilala, he gave up travelling, and the boys erected a hut, in which he lay for a few days, gradually growing weaker, and at last, on the day mentioned, he expired. His body was brought by his faithful followers to the coast, and shipped for this country, where it arrived on Wednesday the 15th of April 1874. It was taken in solemn procession through the streets of Southampton, and conveyed by a special train to London. On the 18th, the remains of the noble missionary and traveller were interred in the central nave of Westminster Abbey, in the presence of a vast assembly, including men of distinction in almost every walk of life. The lines which Lord Houghton wrote upon the occasion of the Westminster Abbey funeral may here be quoted: 'The swarthy followers stood aloof, He bade them, as they passed the hut, To him, may be, through broken sleep, These words were into senses deep Dear dead salutes of wife and child, Welcoming sounds of fresh-blown seas, Of homeward travel, So it must have been with the mind of this true British hero, this nobly faithful servant of tianity, when he lay down to science, of charity, and Chrisrest in the wilderness, at the end of a lonely and laborious wandering life. HUGH MIDDLETON-JOHN SMEATON-HENRY WINSTANLEY-JOHN RUD YERD-JAMES BRINDLEY-THOMAS TELFORD-JOHN RENNIE-ROBERT in the banks of the Witham at Boston, Matthew Hake was sent for from Gravelines in Flanders; and he brought with him not only the mechanics, but the manufactured iron required for the work. The art of bridgemaking had sunk so low in England about the middle of the last century, that we were under the necessity of employing the Swiss engineer, Labelye, to build Westminster Bridge. 'OUR first lessons in mechani- when a serious breach occurred cal civil engineering,' says Mr. Smiles, were principally obtained from Dutchmen, who supplied us with our first windmills, watermills, and pumping engines. Holland even sent us the necessary labourers to execute our first great works of drainage. The great level of the Fens was drained by Vermuyden, and another Dutchman, Freestone, was employed to reclaim the marsh near Wells in Norfolk. Canvey Island, near the mouth of the Thames, was embanked by Joas Croppenburgh and his company of Dutch workmen. When a new haven was required at Yarmouth, Joas Johnson, the Dutch engineer, was employed to plan and construct the works, and 'In short, we depended for all our engineering upon foreigners. At a time when Holland had completed its magnificent system of water communication, and when France, Germany, and even Russia had opened up important lines of inland navigation, England had not ing. Not since, Italy, Spain, France, and many centuries Holland looked down contemptuously on the poor but with Nature for a subsistence proud islanders, contending amidst their fogs and their mists. Though surrounded by the sea, we had scarcely any navy until within the last three hundred fisheries were so unproductive, years. Even our by the Dutch, who sold us the that our markets were supplied coasts. England was then regarded principally as a magazine for the supply of raw materials, which were carried away in foreign ships and partly returned to us in manufactures worked up by foreign artists. We grew wool for Flanders, as America grows cotton for England now. Even the little manufactured at home was sent to the Low Countries to be dyed. 'After the lapse of a century, we find the state of things has become entirely reversed. Instead of borrowing engineers from abroad, we now send them to all parts of the world. Britishbuilt steamships ply on every sea; we export machinery to all quarters, and supply Holland itself with pumping engines. Dur-herrings caught upon our own ing that period our engineers have completed a magnificent system of canals, turnpike roads, bridges, and railways, by which the internal communications of the country have been completely opened up; they have built lighthouses round our coasts, by which ships freighted with the produce of all lands, when nearing our shores in the dark, are safely lighted along to their destined havens: they have hewn out and built docks and harbours for the accommodation of a gigantic commerce; whilst their inventive genius has rendered fire and water the most untiring workers in all branches of industry, and the most effective agents in locomotion by land and sea. Nearly all this has been accomplished during the last century, much of it within the life of the present generation. 'Most of the Continental nations had a long start of us in art, in science, in mechanics, in navigation, and in engineer of industry were begun by 'Most of our modern branches foreigners, many of whom were driven by religious persecution to seek an asylum in England. Our first cloth-workers, silkweavers, and lace-makers, were French and Flemish refugees. The brothers Elers, Dutchmen, began the pottery manufacture; Spillman, a German, erected the first paper-mill at Dartford ; and Boomen, a Dutchman, England. brought the first coach into labour done, we almost invari'When we wanted any skilled ably sent for foreigners to do it. SIR HUGH MIDDLETON. During the reigns of Elizabeth and James, a number of schemes were projected for supplying London with water, the conduits resorted to for that purpose being now found insufficient to answer the increasing demands of an extending metropolis. Elizabeth granted an Act which gave the citizens liberty to cut and convey a river from any part of Middlesex or Hertfordshire to the city of London, within the limited time of four years, but which was never acted upon. or according to others, a silver mine, in Cardiganshire), at whose instigation, it would seem, the city had applied for the Acts last mentioned, made an offer to the Court of Common Council on the 28th of March 1609, that he would begin this work within two months, they transferring to him the power vested in them by the said two Acts; whereupon the Court accepted his offer, and ordered that a letter of attorney should be made out from the Mayor and Common Council, which was done on the 1st of April following, and that indentures should be made and passed between them and him, which was also done on the 21st of the same month. Being vested with ample power from the city, this gentleman, with a spirit equal to the importance of the undertaking, at his own risk and charge, began the work, but had not proceeded far when innumerIn the early part of James' able and unforeseen difficulties reign, the citizens procured an presented themselves. The art Act for the bringing in a fresh of civil engineering was then stream of running water to the little understood in this country, north part of the city of London, and he experienced many obwhich was followed by another structions from the occupiers to explain the said statute; but and proprietors of the lands the difficulties of the undertak-through which he was under ing appeared so great, that they the necessity of conducting his declined to embark any further stream. in it. The distance of the springs, from Chadwell and Amwell, is twenty miles from London; but it was found necessary, order to avoid the emine: and valleys in the way, to n |