Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1901 — THEMIRAGE. [ARTICLE]

THEMIRAGE.

Aa lagtneer’a Impressions Aft«r In* ths Fantastic Phenomenon. “I have eeen the mirage several times in Arizona and southern California,” said a railroad engineer of New Orleans to a Times-Democrat naan, “and every description of the phenomenon I have ever read was ridiculously inaccurate. My first experience with the real thing was in eastern. Arizona, about 50 miles from the state line. Thu country at that point is a rolling, grass-covered plain, ideal for grazing purposes, and the day was sweltering hot, without a breath of wind. I was on horseback with a couple of companions on the way to a railroad camp in the vicinity, and, happening to glance along the landscape, I was astonished by an extraordinary apparition some distance to the south. It looked like a bunch of cattle with enormously long legs, upon which they towered at least a hundred feet into the air, while in the horizon, about on a line with their was a long, blue, misty streak, like a dim, floating island. The cattle were moving-to and fro and the effect was indescribably strange and fantastic. While I was staring with all my eyes, wondering whether I had suddenly gone crazy, one of my companions looked around and shouted ‘EI cavalos!’ which is Mexican border patois for the mirage. Then the whole thing was plain to me. It was simply an illusion produced by the intense heat and certain peculiar atmospheric conditions. We looked at it for perhaps a quarter of an hour before it began to gradually fade. In a little while everything was normal. The next time I witnessed the phenomenon was on the Arizona desert, the other side of the Tucson. On that occasion it had the appearance of a long stretch of glistening sand, raised perhaps three degrees above the horizon line. Underneath it I could see the clear sky. It seemed to be a double reflection of the extreme edge of the landscape. I afterward saw substantially the same thing in lower California, south of Death valley, and was told by natives that the appearance was quite common.' lam unable to understand how travelers could ever mistake it for water. Each time I saw it it was self-evidently an optical illusion