a few naked huts and
ragged shrubs. Had they not been undeceived by their nearer approach,
there was not a man in the French army who would not have sworn, that
the visionary trees and lakes had a real existence in the midst of the
desert.

The same appearance precisely was observed by Dr. Clarke at Raschid, or
Rosetta. The city seemed surrounded by a beautiful sheet of water, and
so certain was his Greek interpreter, who was acquainted with the
country, of this fact, that he was quite indignant at an Arab, who
attempted to explain to him, that it was a mere optical delusion. At
length, they reached Rosetta in about two hours, without meeting any
water; and, on looking back on the sand they had just crossed, it seemed
to them, as if they had just waded through a vast blue lake.

A similar deception takes place in northern climates. Cities,
battlements, houses, and all the accompaniments of populous places, are
seen in desolate regions, where life goes out, and where human foot has
never trod. When approached they vanish, and nothing remains but a
rugged rock, or a misshapen iceberg.

Captain Scoresby, in his voyage to the arctic regions, on the coast of
East Greenland, constantly saw those visionary cities, and gives some
highly curious plates of the appearances they presented. They resembled
the real cities seen on the coast of Holland, where towers, and
battlements, and spires, "bosomed high in tufted trees," rise on the
level horizon, and are seen floating on the surface of the sea. Among
the optic deceptions noticed by Captain Scoresby, was one of a very
singular nature. His ship had been separated by the ice, from that of
his father for some time; and he was looking 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 colours, 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 divided from him by immense masses of icebergs, and
at such a distance that it was quite impossible to have seen the ship in
her actual situation, or seen her at all, if her spectrum, or image, had
not been thus raised several degrees above the horizon into the sky, by
this most extraordinary refraction, in the same manner as the sun is
often seen, after he is known to have