392 THE KORAN ON THE MIRAGE. 



parched and withered corpses, by the Arabs sent upon the 

 search. * 



Here the remarkable words of the Koran instinc- 

 tively rise up before the mind's eye, where the Moslem 

 prophet skilfully availing" himself of the apparently 

 supernatural phenomenon of the mirage, so constantly 

 witnessed by his followers in these sun-stricken regions, 

 thus figuratively applies it to represent the state of 

 the infidel and says, " The works of the incredulous 

 are like the mirage (Es Serdb] of the plain; the 

 thirsty man taketh it for water, until he draweth nigh 

 unto it, and then he findeth that it is nothing." f 



The angle of refraction, in fact, becomes altered 

 as the observer shifts his position, till at length the 

 illusion dispels itself by suddenly vanishing, and 

 instead of cooling waters, the dry and barren desert 

 stands revealed as one vast sandy ocean, covering the 

 face of Nature. 



Such is sometimes the effect of seeing things from 

 a different point of view! How often do we find it 

 so in everyday life, and see people chasing some 

 phantom, the supposed ideal of complete felicity, only 

 to discover, should some few of them succeed in ap- 

 proaching it, that it vanishes like the mirage, or else 

 turns out to be something altogether different to what 

 they expected. 



Probably one of the most remarkable instances on 

 record, of travellers being deceived by the mirage, 

 is quoted in the History of Australian Exploration, as 

 occurring on the borders of Lake Torrens, South 



* The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, by Sir Samuel Baker, 1867, 

 pp. 12 and 13. 



j- The Koran of Mahomet. Sura xxv. 



