ount for all this? To this day I
cannot without vexation remember the childish astonishment that prevented
me from observing the really interesting features of the spectacle and
kept my eyes fixed with a foolish distension on a lot of distorted mules,
teamsters and wagons.

One of the commonest and best known tricks of the mirage is that of
overlaying a dry landscape with ponds and lakes, and by a truly
interesting and appropriate coincidence one or more travelers perishing of
thirst seem always to be present, properly to appreciate the humor of the
deception; but when a gentleman whose narrative suggested this article
averred that he had seen these illusory lakes navigated by phantom boats
filled with visionary persons he was, I daresay, thought to be drawing the
long bow, even by many miragists in good standing. For aught I know he may
have been. I can only attest the entirely credible character of the
statement.

Away up at the headwaters of the Missouri, near the British possessions, I
found myself one afternoon rather unexpectedly on the shore of an ocean.
At less than a gunshot from where I stood was as plainly defined a
seabeach as one could wish to see. The eye could follow it in either
direction, with all its bays, inlets and promontories, to the horizon. The
sea was studded with islands, and these with tall trees of many kinds,
both islands and trees being reflected in the water with absolute
fidelity. On many of the islands were houses, showing white beneath the
trees, and on one which lay farthest out seaward was a considerable city,
with towers, domes and clusters of steeples. There were ships in the
offing whose sails glistened in the sunlight and, closer in, several boats
of novel but graceful design, crowded with human figures, moved smoothly
among the lesser islands, impelled by some power invisible from my point
of view, each boat attended by its inverted reflection "crowding up
beneath the keel." It must be admitted that the voyagers were habited
after a somewhat uncommon fashion--almost unearthly, I may say--and were
so grouped that at my distance I could not clearly distinguish their
individual limbs and attitudes. Their features were, of course, entirely
invisible. None the less, they were plainly human beings--what other
creatures would be boating? Of the other features of the scene--the coast,
islands, trees, houses, city and ships hull-down in the offing--I
distinctly affirm an absolute identit