Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/174

164 peculiarities of the vegetation (leafless elm trees in midsummer) nor the tiles on the chimneys offered any difficulties. The obvious but commonplace explanation was that of the few only. Even now, every summer, some account of the marvel goes the rounds of the newspapers. I am told that in 1896 a company of people encamped for some time on the glacier, in hopes of seeing this great wonder of Nature.

They did not see it, unfortunately, but others had better success, and these lucky ones have recently substantiated their account by their affidavits. An affidavit in Juneau costs but a drink of whisky, the usual price along the Northwest coast, a fact of which one great nation of our day has not been slow to profit in connection with an International Tribunal of Arbitration. As the sale of photographs declines, more persons will probably be granted a sight of the Silent City, and there will arise anew series of affidavits and newspaper stories.

It is hardly necessary to call the attention of the intelligent reader to the absurdities involved in Mr. Willoughby's story and in the photograph which is its financial justification. But there are many persons, not without education and culture, who believe without the least question any tale which is uncanny or which seems outside the ordinary run of things. In vain does Science protest that the natural order is the only order there is, that all contradictions to it are either so in appearance only or else are deceptions or frauds.

An interest in human psychology led Dr. Charles H. Gilbert, then acting as naturalist on the Albatross, to investigate Mr. Willoughby's methods of photography. He learned from Mr. Willoughby that the plates used were of the ordinary sort, but that the mirage required a very long exposure to set the picture. Mr. Willoughby had had no previous knowledge of photography, and had never tried to reproduce anything except mirages. The chemicals used in developing the negative he would not describe. It was a secret process. The exposed plates had to be soaked for three months in the secret compound before the picture would be fixed. This soaking took place in the open daylight, no dark room being required, nor did Mr. Willoughby seem aware of the ordinary function of the dark chamber in photography.

The original negative, examined by Dr. Gilbert, was a very old, stained, and faded plate, apparently a negative which had been discarded because underexposed.

Prof. William H. Hudson, of Stanford University, who lived for a time in Bristol, England, recognizes the picture as a view of that city from Brandon Hill, above the town. The picture must have been taken some twenty years ago, because Prof. Hudson distinctly remembers the scaffolding around the towers