THE SEA AND THE DESERT. 
177 
admire the various beautiful forms and colors of the sand, 
and we noticed an interesting mirage, which I have 
since found that Hitchcock also observed on the sands 
of the Cape. We were crossing a shallow valley in 
the Desert, where the smooth and spotless sand sloped 
upward by a small angle to the horizon on every side, 
and at the lowest part was a long chain of clear but 
shallow pools. As we were approaching these for a 
drink in a diagonal direction across the valley, they 
appeared inclined at a slight but decided angle to the 
horizon, though they were plainly and broadly con¬ 
nected with one another, and there was not the least 
ripple to suggest a current; so that by the time we 
had reached a convenient part of one we seemed to 
have ascended several feet. They appeared to lie by 
magic on the side of the vale, like a mirror left in a 
slanting position. It was a very pretty mirage for a 
Provincetown desert, but not amounting to what, in 
Sanscrit, is called “the thirst of the gazelle,” as there 
was real water here for a base, and we were able to 
quench our thirst after all. 
Professor Pafn, of Copenhagen, thinks that the mi¬ 
rage which I noticed, but which an old inhabitant of 
Provincetown, to whom I mentioned it, had never seen 
nor heard of, had something to do with the name “ Fur- 
dustrandas,” i. e. Wonder-Strands, given, as I have said, 
in the old Icelandic account of Thorfinn’s expedition 
to Yinland in the year 1007, to a part of the coast 
on which he landed. But these sands are more re¬ 
markable for their length than for their mirage, which 
is common to all deserts, and the reason for the name 
which the Northmen themselves give, — “ because it 
took a long time to sail by them,” — is sufficient and 
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