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are of the most celebrated mirages is that which is observed now and then from the neighborhood of Glacier Bay. In Alaska, where, in the distance, above a vast sheet of glacial ice, a city is seen as if suspended in the air. It has buildings of beautiful and impos ing architecture, tall churches with spires and buttresses and many streets of houses, plain to the view. This is the so called Silent City of Alaska. The Duke of the Abruzzi saw it a few years ago when he visited Alaska. Many attempts have been made to photograph it, but for some reason unexpiraned, without success. Some persons have gone so far as to declare that it is a view of the city of Bristol, in England. Irregularities of the formation, plus imagination, doubtless account for the strange vision—an uplifting of the supposed scene being attributable to mirage. Optical fusions of this kind are not uncommon in Arctic and Ant arctic regions. There is a famous mirage called “Fata Morgana,” which on occasions is seen from the neighborhood of Reg gio, in Italy. Here the effect pro duced is due to a layer of heated air, which by refraction of light brings into a low @ distorted picture of the far-away Sicilian shore. To the Ital ian peasant it appears as a city, with palaces, towers and minarets—the mysterious home of the fairy Morgana. William Scoresby, the Arctic ex plorer, describes a similar mirage which he beheld from off the coast of Greenland. He writes: “The general appearance of the coast, as viewed through a telescope, was that of an extensive ancient city, abounding in ruins of castles, obelisks, churches and monuments—a grand and interest ing phantasmagoria.” A feature of Arctic geography which appears on all the maps is Crocker Land, which Perry though he saw from a mountain peak in Grant Land. The troops of Napoleon when he was in Egypt were rather frightened by mirages. And during the recent war the British in Mesopotamia were obliged on at least one occasion to stop fighting because of the confusion arising from an illusion of the kind. As everybody knows, mirages are very common in hot desert regions. A layer of warmed and rarefied air is #4 a mirror, reflecting objects above it. Thus, reflecting the sky, it may produce the effect of a sheet of water, the unsteadiness of the heated air sending ripples to help out the pic ture and render it more deceptive.
Newspaper Details
Durham Review
Durham, Ontario, CA
Thu, Nov 11, 1920
Page 6
Full Page
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