Excerpt from The Mirage of Life This remarkable natural appearance is an opti cal illusion. Produced by the reflection of objects on the oblique rays of the sun refracted by the air, which is rarefied by the heat of the burning soil. It is apparently alluded to in the sacred Scriptures Isaiah 7: In the wilderness shall 'waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. The word trans lated parched ground is, in the original, of thesame form as serab, the term which the Arabs in the present day employ when Speaking of the Mirage? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.