Mirage

Abstract

THIS afternoon, shortly after 4.30 p.m., my attention was drawn to an extraordinary and wonderfully perfect “mirage.” My house, situated almost on the extreme point of Hartlepool, near the Heugh Lighthouse, overlooks with a south aspect the Hartlepool or Tees Bay, Redcar, Saltburn, and in clear weather a beautiful high coast-line stretching from Saltburn to Staithes. When first seen, all the houses of Redcar, some seven miles distant, and lying almost at sea-level, were enormously elongated to at least six or seven times their ordinary height, and looked like high square towers with intensified colouring. I could not however determine (with the aid of an opera glass) whether the phenomenon was a simple elongation or whether the upper part of the “mirage” was an inverted image of the houses. I am inclined to think that the lower two-thirds was an elongation of the buildings, while the upper third was an inverted image.