The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

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.”]

ATMOSPHERICAL REFRACTION.

A surprising instance of atmospherical refraction occurred at Hastings, England, on the twenty-sixth of July, 1798. W. Latham, Esq., sitting in his dining-room, situated on the parade, close to the sea-shore, and nearly fronting the south, about five in the afternoon, had his attention suddenly drawn by a great number of people running down to the seaside. On inquiring the reason, he was informed that the coast of France was plainly to be distinguished by the naked eye. On going down to the shore, he was surprised to find that, even without the assistance of a telescope, he could very plainly see the cliffs on the opposite coast; which, at the nearest part, are between forty and fifty miles distant, and are not to be discerned, from that low situation, by the aid of the best glasses. They appeared to be only a few miles off, and seemed to extend for some leagues along the coast. Pursuing his walk along the shore to the eastward, close to the water’s edge, and conversing on the subject with the sailors and fishermen, they could not, at first, be persuaded of the reality of the appearance; but soon became so thoroughly convinced, by the cliffs gradually appearing more elevated, and approaching nearer as it were, that they pointed out and named to him the different places they had been accustomed to visit, such as, the Bay, the Old Head or Man, the Windmill, &c., at Boulogne; together with St. Vallery, and other places on the coast of Picardy. This they afterward confirmed, when they viewed them, thus refracted, through their telescopes, observing that the above places appeared as near as if they had been sailing, at a small distance, into the harbors. From the eastern cliff, which is of a very considerable hight, a most beautiful scene presented itself to Mr. Latham’s view, for there he could at once see Dungeness, Dover cliffs, and the French coast, all along from Calais, Boulogne, &c., to St. Vallery; and, as some of the fishermen affirmed, as far to the westward even as Dieppe. By the telescope, the French fishing-boats were plainly to be seen at anchor, and the different colors of the land on the hights, with the buildings, were perfectly discernible. This curious phenomenon continued in the highest splendor till half past eight o’clock, notwithstanding a black cloud for some time totally obscured the face of the sun, and then vanished gradually. So remarkable an instance of atmospherical refraction had not been before witnessed by the oldest inhabitant of Hastings. It was likewise observed at Winchelsea, and other places along the coast. The day was remarkably hot, without a breath of wind stirring.

As another instance of this refracting power of the atmosphere, Dr. Vince, an English philosopher, was once looking through a telescope at a ship, which was so far off, that he could only see the upper parts of the masts. The hulk was entirely hidden by the bending of the water, but between himself and the ship he saw two perfect images of it in the air. These were of the same form and color as the real ship; but one of them was turned upside down. And when Captain Scoresby was in the polar sea with his ship, he was separated by the ice from that of his father for some time, and looked out for her every day with great anxiety. At length, one evening, to his utter astonishment, he saw her suspended in the air, in an inverted position, traced on the horizon in the clearest colors, and with the most distinct and perfect representation. He sailed in the direction in which he saw this visionary phenomenon, and actually found his father’s vessel by its indication. He was separated from the ship by immense masses of icebergs, and at such a distance that it was impossible to have seen her in her actual situation, or to have seen her at all, if her spectrum had not been thus raised several degrees above the horizon in the air by this most extraordinary refraction. It is by this bending of the rays of light that the images of people are often seen at a distance, and sometimes magnified to a gigantic size. We have given an account of such an appearance in the Hartz mountains, in Germany.

Another singular instance of the refracting power of the atmosphere, was witnessed within the present year, (1854,) by Mr. Elliott, the aeronaut, while ascending in his balloon from Petersburg, Virginia. After he had ascended about three thousand feet he discharged some five pounds of ballast, when he shot onward and upward with amazing rapidity till he began to approximate to the clouds. He then discharged about five pounds more of sand, the remainder of the bag, when he again darted upward among the clouds, which were so dense as to wholly exclude all terrestrial objects from his view, and of course he was lost to all observers below. These discharges were distinctly seen by persons watching him, and on the first occasion some one exclaimed that the balloon had burst. While among the clouds, it seemed to him as if he was in the midst of a large ground-glass globe, some two or three hundred feet in diameter, against the side of which opposite to the sun, the shadow of his balloon rested, some five or six times larger than the corporeal one. About half-way between him and the shadow, which seemed as if resting on the glass wall, another balloon was seen, of a size between the shadow and the real one, resting as if in a vacuum, which displayed every color of the original faithfully. He then saw another Elliott, clad and with features like himself, and seemingly self-like. He then extended his own fingers, when he was mimicked by his image; and whether he extended one finger or more, or whatever he did, this figure duplicated exactly. When he would cause his balloon to oscillate, this balloon would move exactly like his. When he threw out more ballast to elevate himself, this figure sank down instead of rising with him; and when he arose above the clouds into the rays of the unclouded sun, he left the mimic aeronaut below him.

In the rays of the sun above the clouds he found it so warm as to cause him to perspire freely, a state of heat never before experienced at this hight, nearly twenty-four thousand feet, where the air is very rarefied and generally very chilly. He then opened the valve for the purpose of descending, and as soon as he had sunk one or two thousand feet, which he ascertained by barometrical indications, he felt as if he had entered an ice-house, and a cold chill seized his whole person. Here he again met his mimic aerial voyager, whom he kept in company for some time, from philosophical motives. Whenever he moved sideways, this mum gentleman would move in the same direction. But when he moved up or down, the duplicate would move in a directly opposite way; and when he concluded to descend, the image moved upward until the tricolored flag was out of sight, when he could see the car and the aeronaut still standing in it as if in a basket attached to nothing. He continued to look until his head was Robespierred, and finally, piece by piece, his body, and, at last, his feet and basket, ascended out of his sight. Mr. Elliott said that he had been up a hundred and one times, but never had seen anything in the form of an illusion like this before.