370 EGYPT. 
CHAP, -vvliat manner we were to pass the water. Our 
interpreter, although a Greek, and therefore 
likely to have been informed of such a phaeno- 
menon, was as fully convinced as any of us that 
we were drawing near to the water's edge, and 
became indignant when the Arals maintained 
that within an hour we should reach Rosetta, by 
crossing tlie sands in the direct line we then 
pursued, and that there was no water. " What," 
said he, giving way to his i.npatience, " do you 
suppose me an ideot, to be persuaded contrary 
to the evidence of my senses?" The Arabs, 
smiling, soon pacified him, and completely 
astonished the whole party, by desiring us to 
look back at the desert we had already passed, 
where we beheld a precisely similar appearance. 
It was, in fact, the Mirage ' ; a prodigy to which 
(l) An explanation of the phasnomeuon, called Mirage by the French, 
was published at Cairo, in the Decade Egyptienne, vol. I. p. 39. by 
Mange. It is too long for insertion here : but the author thus previously 
describes the illusion. 
" Le soir et le matin, I'aspect du terrain est tel qu'il doit ^tre ; et 
eutre vous et les derniers villages qui s'offreut k voire vue, vous n'ap- 
percevez que la terre ; raais d^s que la surface du sol est suffisamment 
echaufF^e par la presence du soleil, et.jusqu'a ce que, vers le soir, ellc 
commence k se refroidir, le terrain ne paralt plus avoir la mSme exten- 
sion, et il paralt termini k une lieue environ par une inundation 
g:^n^rale. Les villages qui sent places au-delk de cette distance parais- 
sent comme des !Ies situt-es au milieu d'uu grand Lac, et dont on serait 
s6par(! par une dtendue d'eau plus ou moins considerable. Sous chacun 
des villages on voit son image renversee, telle qu'ou la verrait effec- 
tivement s'il v avait en avant une surface d'eau r^fl^chissante." 
To 
