In The City

Mirage Reporter

Inferior Mirage Great Salt Desert, Utah August, 1846
The mirage here displayed its wonderful illusions in a perfection and with a magnificence surpassing any presentation of the kind I had previously seen. Lakes, dotted with islands and bordered by groves of gently waving timber, whose tranquil and limpid waves reflected their sloping banks and the shady islets in their bosom, lay spread out before us, inviting us, by their illusory temptations, to stray from our path and enjoy their cooling shades and refreshing waters Edwin Bryant Charles Kelly, Salt Desert Trails: A History of the Hastings Cutoff (Salt Lake City, Utah: Western Printing Company, 1930), p. 65.

I wonder what that mirage looked like! I came up with a few ideas. It was hard to imagine a mirage that would fit with what I know about mirages, but that would be as spectacular as Bryant describes. Most my ideas ended up looking more like space stations than mirages.
Happily, Edwin Bryant and the members of his party knew enough about mirages to not believe what they saw. But that didn't mean they couldn't enjoy what they saw.