“As when a shepherd of the Hebride isles,
Placed far amid the melancholy main,
(Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles,
Or that aerial beings sometimes deign
To stand embodied to our senses plain,)
Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,
The whilst in ocean Phœbus dips his wain,
A vast assemblage moving to and fro;
Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.”—THOMSON.
These optical appearances of figures in the sea and air, in the Faro of
Messina, are the great delight of the populace, who, whenever the vision
is displayed, run about the streets shouting for joy, and calling on
every one to partake of the glorious sight. To produce this pleasing
deception, many circumstances must concur which are not known to exist
in any other situation. The spectator must stand with his back to the
east, in some elevated place behind the city, that he may command a view
of the whole bay, beyond which the mountains of Messina rise like a
wall, and darken the background of the picture. The winds must be
hushed, the surface of the water quite smooth, the tide at its hight,
and the waters pressed up by currents to a great elevation in the middle
of the channel. All these events coinciding, as soon as the sun
surmounts the eastern hills behind Reggio, (on the Calabrian coast
opposite,) and rises high enough to form an angle of forty-five degrees
on the water before the city, every object, existing or moving at
Reggio, will be repeated a thousand-fold in this marine mirror, which,
by its tremulous motion, is, as it were, cut into facets. Each image
will pass rapidly off in succession, as the day advances, and the stream
carries down the wave on which it appeared. Thus the parts of this
moving picture will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Sometimes the air
is at this time so impregnated with vapors, and undisturbed by winds, as
to reflect objects in a kind of aerial screen, rising about thirty feet
above the level of the sea. In cloudy, heavy weather, they are drawn on
the surface of the water, bordered with fine prismatic colors.
Swinburne, in his travels, cites Father Angelucci as having been the
first to describe this phenomenon accurately. His relation is as
follows. “On the fifteenth of August, 1643, as I stood at my window, I
was surprised with a most wonderful and delectable vision. The sea which
washes the Sicilian shore, swelled up, and became, for twelve miles in
length, like a chain of dark mountains; while the waters near our
Calabrian coast grew quite smooth, and in an instant appeared as one
polished mirror, reclining against the aforesaid ridge. On this glass
was depicted, in _chiar-oscura_, a string of several thousands of
pilasters, all equal in altitude, distance and degree of light and
shade. In a moment they lost half their hight, and bent into arcades,
like Roman aqueducts. A long cornice was next formed on the top, and
above it rose castles innumerable, all perfectly alike. These soon split
into towers, which were shortly after lost in colonnades, then in
windows, and at last ended in pines, cypresses, and other trees, even
and similar. This was the Fata Morgana, which, for twenty-six years, I
had thought a mere fable.”