178 
CAPE COD. 
more applicable to these shores. However, if you should 
sail all the way from Greenland to Buzzard’s Bay along 
the coast, you would get sight of a good many sandy 
beaches. But whether Thor-finn saw the mirage here 
or not, Thor-eau, one of the same family, did; and per¬ 
chance it was because Lief the Lucky had, in a previous 
voyage, taken Thor-er and his people off the rock in the 
middle of the sea, that Thor-eau was born to see it. 
This was not the only mirage which I saw on the 
Cape. That half of the beach next the bank is com¬ 
monly level, or nearly so, while the other slopes down¬ 
ward to the water. As I was walking upon the edge 
of the bank in Wellfleet at sundown, it seemed to me 
that the inside half of the beach sloped upward toward 
the water to meet the other, forming a ridge ten or 
twelve feet high the whole length of the shore, but 
higher always opposite to where I stood; and I was not 
convinced of the contrary till I descended the bank, 
though the shaded outlines left by the waves of a pre¬ 
vious tide but half-way down the apparent declivity 
might have taught me better. A stranger may easily 
detect what is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the 
strange is his province. The old oysterman, speaking 
of gull-shooting, had said that you must aim under, 
when firing down the bank. 
A neighbor tells me that one August, looking through 
a glass from Naushon to some vessels which were sail¬ 
ing along near Martha’s Vineyard, the water about them 
appeared perfectly smooth, so that they were refiected in 
it, and yet their full sails proved that it must be rippled, 
and they who were with him thought that it was a mi¬ 
rage, i. e. a reflection from a haze. 
From the above-mentioned sand-hill we overlooked 
