This very curious phenomenon, which was remarked by M. Monge, one of the French savans belonging to the institute of Cairo, in the hot and sandy desert between Alexandria and that city, is described by him as resulting from an inverted image of the cerulean sky intermixed with the ground scenery, the neighboring villages appearing to be surrounded with a most beautiful sheet of water, and to exist, like islands, in its liquid expanse, tantalizing the eye by an unfaithful representation of what the thirsty traveler earnestly desires.
Doctor Clarke, in his interesting travels, introduces the following animated description of this phenomenon. “Here [at the village of Utko] we procured asses for our party, and, setting out for Rosetta, began to recross the desert, appearing like an ocean of sand, but flatter and firmer as to its surface, than before. The Arabs, uttering their harsh, guttural language, ran chattering by the side of our asses; until some of them calling out ‘Raschid!’ we perceived its domes and turrets, apparently upon the opposite side of an immense lake or sea, that covered all the intervening space between us and the city. Not having in my own mind, at the time, any doubt as to the certainty of its being water, and seeing the tall minarets and buildings of Rosetta, with all its groves of dates and sycamores, as perfectly reflected by it as by a mirror, insomuch that even the minutest detail of the architecture and of the trees might have been thence delineated, I applied to the Arabs to be informed in what manner we were to pass the water. Our interpreter, although a Greek, and therefore likely to have been informed of such a phenomenon, was as fully convinced as any of us, that we were drawing near to the water’s edge, and became indignant, when the Arabs maintained, that within an hour we should reach Rosetta, by crossing the sands in the direct line we then pursued, and that there was no water. ‘What!’ said he, giving way to his impatience, ‘do you suppose me an idiot, to be persuaded contrary to the evidence of my senses?’ The Arabs, smiling, soon pacified him, and completely astonished the whole party, by desiring us to look back at the desert we had already passed, where we beheld a precisely similar appearance. It was, in fact, the mirage, a prodigy to which all of us were then strangers, although it afterward became more familiar. Yet upon no future occasion did we ever behold this extraordinary illusion so marvelously displayed. The view of it afforded us ideas of the horrible despondency to which travelers must sometimes be exposed, who, in traversing the interminable desert, destitute of water, and perishing with thirst, have sometimes this deceitful prospect before their eyes.”
This appearance is often seen, when the sun shines, upon the extensive flat sand upon the shores of the Bristol channel, in Somersetshire, and probably on the sea-shore in other parts of England.
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,