156 LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. 



The phenomena of the Fata Morgana have 

 been too imperfectly described to enable us to 

 offer a satisfactory explanation of them. The 

 aerial images are obviously those formed by un- 

 equal refraction. The pictures seen on the sea 

 may be either the aerial images reflected from its 

 surface, or from a stratum of dense vapour, or 

 they may be the direct reflexions from the objects 

 themselves. The coloured images, as described 

 by Minasi, have never been seen in any analogous 

 phenomena, and require to be better described 

 before they can be submitted to scientific 

 examination. 



The representation of ships in the air by un- 

 equal refraction has no doubt given rise in early 

 times to those superstitions which have prevailed 

 in different countries respecting "phantom ships," 

 as Mr. Washington Irving calls them, which always 

 sail in the eye of the wind, and plough their way 

 through the smooth sea, where there is not a 

 breath of wind upon its surface. In his beautiful 

 story of the storm ship, which makes its way up 

 the Hudson against wind and tide, this elegant 

 writer has finely embodied one of the most 

 interesting superstitions of the early American 

 colonists. The Flying Dutchman had, in all 

 probability, a similar origin; and the wizard 

 beacon-keeper of the Isle of France, who saw in 

 the air the vessels bound to the island long before 

 they appeared in the offing, must have derived 

 his power from a diligent observation of the 

 phenomena of nature. 



