REFRACTION. 
65 
was like gazing at a panorama through badly blown 
and uneven glass. 
The little islands about the shore were elevated into 
Champagne bottles and mushrooms, and some head- 
lands, which I had sketched before the distortion, now 
sent out lateral prolongations which almost bridged 
the contiguous hills. 
Although I have since seen many beautiful displays 
of this phenomendn, I have never known it more strik- 
ingly varied within such limited compass. My sketch 
shows in the upper line the true profile of the coast ; 
the two lower lines give a very imperfect idea of its 
successive phases as refracted. It was, indeed, im- 
possible to embody them in a drawing. A thousand 
forms, inverted, looming, and distorted most extrava- 
gantly, were shifting about within an arc of ten de- 
grees of coast. At the same time, we had out among 
the icebergs, toward the southwest, the repetition on 
an enlarged scale of the complicated modifications of 
refraction seen off Ramsgate, and described by Pro- 
E 
