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 of kilometres in all directions. The falls are formed as the full width of the river plummets in a single vertical drop into a transverse chasm wide, carved by its waters along a fracture zone in the basalt plateau. The depth of the chasm, called the First Gorge, varies from at its western end to in the centre. The only outlet to the First Gorge is a wide gap about two-thirds of the way across the width of the falls from the western end. The whole volume of the river pours into the Victoria Falls gorges from this narrow cleft.