Victoria Falls Victoria Falls Victoria Falls (Lozi: "Mosi-oa-Tunya", "The Smoke that Thunders") is a waterfall in southern Africa on the Zambezi River at the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary and explorer, is believed to have been the first European to view Victoria Falls on 16 November 1855, from what is now known as Livingstone Island, one of two land masses in the middle of the river, immediately upstream from the falls near the Zambian shore. Livingstone named his discovery in honour of Queen Victoria of Britain, but the indigenous Lozi language name, "Mosi-oa-Tunya"—"The Smoke That Thunders"—continues in
Victoria Falls line and abandonment of the earlier line. North-south oriented joints control the south flowing sections of the river. One of these is the "Boiling Pot", which links the First Gorge with the Second Gorge. The falls may have already started cutting back the next major gorge, at the dip in one side of the "Devil's Cataract", between the western river bank and Cataract Island. The lip in the current falls is lowest here and carries the greatest concentration of water at flood stage. The sedimentary sequence overlying the basalt at the Zambezi River margins is called the Victoria Falls Formation,