y of visible aspect with those to
which we are accustomed in the realm of reality; imagination had simply
nothing to do with the matter. True, I had not recently had the advantage
of seeing any such objects, except trees, and these had been mighty poor
specimens, but, like Macduff, I "could not but remember such things were,"
nor had I forgotten how they looked.

Of course I was not for an instant deceived by all this: I knew that under
it all lay a particularly forbidding and inhospitable expanse of sagebrush
and cactus, peopled with nothing more nearly akin to me than prairie dogs,
ground owls and jackass rabbits--that with these exceptions the desert was
as desolate as the environment of Ozymandias' "vast and trunkless legs of
stone." But as a show it was surely the most enchanting that human eyes
had ever looked on, and after more years than I care to count it remains
one of memory's most precious possessions. The one thing which always
somewhat impairs the illusion in such instances--the absence of the
horizon water-line--did not greatly abate the _vraisemblance_ in this, for
the large island in the distance nearly closed the view seaward, and the
ships occupied most of the remaining space. I had but to fancy a slight
haze on the farther water, and all was right and regular. For more than a
half-hour this charming picture remained intact; then ugly patches of
plain began to show through, the islands with their palms and temples
slowly dissolved, the boats foundered with every soul on board, the sea
drifted over the headlands in a most unwaterlike way, and inside the hour
since,

like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise,
Silent upon a peak in Darien,

I had discovered this unknown sea all this insubstantial pageant had faded
like the baseless fabric of the vision that it was and left not a rack
behind.

In some of its minor manifestations the mirage is sometimes seen on the
western coast of our continent, in the bay of San Francisco, for example,
causing no small surprise to the untraveled and unread observer, and no
small pain to the spirits of purer fire who are fated to be caught within
earshot and hear him pronounce it a "mirridge." I have seen Goat Island
without visible means of support and Red Rock suspended in mid-air like
the coffin of the Prophet. Looking up toward Mare Island one most
ungracious morning when