FATA MORGANA.
“As when a shepherd of the Hebride isles,
Placed far amid the melancholy main,
(Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles,
Or that aerial beings sometimes deign
To stand embodied to our senses plain,)
Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,
The whilst in ocean Phœbus dips his wain,
A vast assemblage moving to and fro;
Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.”—Thomson.
These optical appearances of figures in the sea and air, in the Faro of Messina, are the great delight of the populace, who, whenever the vision is displayed, run about the streets shouting for joy, and calling on every one to partake of the glorious sight. To produce this pleasing deception, many circumstances must concur which are not known to exist in any other situation. The spectator must stand with his back to the east, in some elevated place behind the city, that he may command a view of the whole bay, beyond which the mountains of Messina rise like a wall, and darken the background of the picture. The winds must be hushed, the surface of the water quite smooth, the tide at its hight, and the waters pressed up by currents to a great elevation in the middle of the channel. All these events coinciding, as soon as the sun surmounts the eastern hills behind Reggio, (on the Calabrian coast opposite,) and rises high enough to form an angle of forty-five degrees on the water before the city, every object, existing or moving at Reggio, will be repeated a thousand-fold in this marine mirror, which, by its tremulous motion, is, as it were, cut into facets. Each image will pass rapidly off in succession, as the day advances, and the stream carries down the wave on which it appeared. Thus the parts of this moving picture will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Sometimes the air is at this time so impregnated with vapors, and undisturbed by winds, as to reflect objects in a kind of aerial screen, rising about thirty feet above the level of the sea. In cloudy, heavy weather, they are drawn on the surface of the water, bordered with fine prismatic colors.
Swinburne, in his travels, cites Father Angelucci as having been the first to describe this phenomenon accurately. His relation is as follows. “On the fifteenth of August, 1643, as I stood at my window, I was surprised with a most wonderful and delectable vision. The sea which washes the Sicilian shore, swelled up, and became, for twelve miles in length, like a chain of dark mountains; while the waters near our Calabrian coast grew quite smooth, and in an instant appeared as one polished mirror, reclining against the aforesaid ridge. On this glass was depicted, in chiar-oscura, a string of several thousands of pilasters, all equal in altitude, distance and degree of light and shade. In a moment they lost half their hight, and bent into arcades, like Roman aqueducts. A long cornice was next formed on the top, and above it rose castles innumerable, all perfectly alike. These soon split into towers, which were shortly after lost in colonnades, then in windows, and at last ended in pines, cypresses, and other trees, even and similar. This was the Fata Morgana, which, for twenty-six years, I had thought a mere fable.”[fable.”]