Zambesi, zam-ba'ze, a river of South Africa, the fourth in size. Its general course is from west to east. It rises in Portugese West Afriza, crosses Rhodesia, and passes through Portuguese East Africa into Mozambique Channel opposite Madagascar. The river was visited by David Livingstone in 1851. In 1855 he discovered Victoria Falls. The Zambesi drains 600,000 square miles of territory. The valley has a white man's climate. It is capable of sustaining a tremendous population. It is one of the regions of which the intelligent reader will desire to be informed. It lies in the course of the Cape to Cairo Railway. At Victoria Falls the Zambesi, here a noble stream, plunges into a rocky chasm 400 feet deep. In 1904 a magnificent steel-work railway bridge was thrown across the chasm. The steel work was obtained from a bridge firm of Cleveland, Ohio. The bridge is the highest--420 feet--in the world, and it was built in the shortest time recorded for such a work, viz., nineteen weeks. No other bridge of its size and capacity has ever been built so cheaply. The bridge is coated with gray paint and is rendered as invisible as possible against the cloud of spray,--"the smoke that sounds," as the natives call it,--that rises from the Falls. The undue obtrusion on the landscape which so many feared has thus been obviated. It is proposed to use the waterpower to develop manufactures. There is an abundance of coal, iron, and copper in the vicinity. None of the grandeur of the falls or of the magnificent landscape is to be destroyed in using the power. To prevent this the British government has set aside as a public park a strip of territory six miles long and from one to two miles wide on either side of the river. See CAPE TO CAIRO RAILWAY; AFRICA; UGANDA.