Mirage of Central India. 9.QS 



.... ,i.. . 3 Account of the Mirage of Central India. 



It is only in the cold season that the mirage is visible ; the 

 sojourners of Maroo call it the see-kote, " or castles in the air.'* 

 In the deep desert to the westward, the herdsman and travel- 

 lers through these regions style it chittrdm^ " the picture ;'* 

 while about the plains of the Chumbul and Jumna they term 

 it dessasie?', " the omen of the quarter." This optical decep- 

 tion has been noticed from the remotest times. The prophet 

 Isaiah alludes to it, when he says, " and the parched ground 

 shall become a pool," which the critic has justly rendered^ 

 ' and the seh'ob shall become real water." Quintus Curtius, 

 describing the mirage in the Sogdian desert, says, that " for 

 the space of four hundred furlongs not a drop of water is to 

 be found, and the sun's heat, being very vehement in summer, 

 kindles such a fire in the sands, that every thing is burnt up. 

 There also arises such an exhalation, that the plains wear the 

 appearance of a vast and deep sea ;" which is ah exact descrip- 

 tion of the chittrdm of the Indian desert. But the sehrab and 

 chittrdm., the true mirage of Isaiah, differ from that illusion 

 called the see-kote ; and though the traveller will hasten to it, 

 in order to obtain a night's lodging, I do not think he would 

 expect to slake his thirst there. 



When we witnessed this phenomenon at first, the eye was 

 attracted by a lofty opaque wall of lurid smoke, which seemed 

 to be bounded by, or to rise from, the very verge of the hori- 

 zon. By slow degrees, the dense mass became more transpa- 

 rent, and assumed a reflecting or refracting power: shrubs 

 were magnified into trees ; the dwarf khyre appeared ten times 

 larger than the gigantic amli of the forest. A ray of light 

 suddenly broke the line of continuity of this yet smoky bar- 

 rier ; and, as if touched by the enchanter's wand, castles, 

 towers, and trees, were seen in an aggregated cluster, partly 

 obscured by magnificent foliage. Every accession of light 

 produced a change in the chittrdm, which from the dense wall 

 that it first exhibited, had now faded into a thin transparent 

 film, broken into a thousand masses, each mass being a huge 

 lens ; until at length the too vivid power of the sun dissolved 

 the vision : castles, towers, and foliage, melted, like the en- 

 chantment of Prospero, into " thin air." 



