Though
accustomed to the coast, he had never witnessed nor heard of such a
phenomenon before. I suggested that there might have been a cloud in the
horizon invisible to him, which rose with the sun, and his clock was
only as accurate as the average; or perhaps, as he denied the
possibility of this, it was such a looming of the sun as is said to
occur at Lake Superior and elsewhere. Sir John Franklin, for instance,
says in his "Narrative," that, when he was on the shore of the Polar
Sea, the horizontal refraction varied so much one morning that "the
upper limb of the sun twice appeared at the horizon before it finally
rose."

He certainly must be a son of Aurora to whom the sun looms, when there
are so many millions to whom it _glooms_ rather, or who never see it
till an hour _after_ it has risen. But it behooves us old stagers to
keep our lamps trimmed and burning to the last, and not trust to the
sun's looming.

This keeper remarked that the centre of the flame should be exactly
opposite the centre of the reflectors, and that accordingly, if he was
not careful to turn down his wicks in the morning, the sun falling on
the reflectors on the south side of the building would set fire to them,
like a burning-glass, in the coldest day, and he would look up at noon
and see them all lighted! When your lamp is ready to give light, it is
readiest to receive it, and the sun will light it. His successor said
that he had never known them to blaze in such a case, but merely to
smoke.

I saw that this was a place of wonders. In a sea-turn or shallow fog,
while I was there the next summer, it being clear overhead, the edge of
the bank twenty rods distant appeared like a mountain-pasture in the
horizon. I was completely deceived by it, and I could then understand
why mariners sometimes ran ashore in such cases, especially in the
night, supposing it to be far away, though they could see the land. Once
since this, being in a large oyster-boat two or three hundred miles from
here, in a dark night, when there was a thin veil of mist on land and
water, we came so near to running on to the land before our skipper was
aware of it, that the first warning was my hearing the sound of the surf
under my elbow. I could almost have jumped ashore, and we were obliged
to go about very suddenly to prevent striking. The distant light for
which we were steering, supposing it a light-house five or six miles
off, came through the cracks of a fisherman