El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1901-02-12

Word comes from Victoria. B. c.,
that a party of scientists will leave
there in June for the Big Glacier on
Mount Fairweather. where the Silent
City of Alaska" is seen every year. The
intent of the expedition is to learn
what. if any, relation there is, in time
and weather. between the mirage and
the atmospheric conditions of the city
of Bristol. Eng. which is declared to be
accurately reproduced by the image.
Due DAbruZZi took a pen and ink
sketch of the atmospheric freak four
years ago when on a climbing trip to
Mount ST. Elias. The strange charac-
ter of the phenomenon will be better
understood when the relative locations
of Bristol and the Alaskan coast are
considered. which give them no link
except that of optical effect. Yet here.
for five miles of distance across the
great glacier, every year, at about the
same time, appears this ghoStly appari-
ton of the English town.
If ever a city can be said to have its
immortal presentment, here 1t is.
Strange Illusion which repeats in the
skies of an alien land the sublimated
copy of a modern city. Perhaps Bris-
toll takes this method of asserting her
hold on the country which Sebastian
Cabot. sailing from her harbor in 1897.
laid claim to for England and thus
puts her sign manual of discovery in
the heavens. Her cloud-capped towers
and ancient churches are dissolved
here into immateriai fancieS; the witch
cry of unreality belongs to her empty
streets and glittering outlines. 1t is a
distinction to be thus singled out from
the common mass of cities which have
no astral selves, and changed from a
material hive of crowding, jostling hui
manity, bent only on pleasure or gain
or labor into an unsubstantial and
ethereal pageant This silent city is
what the Germans call the doppelgan-
ger of Bristol, it's translated twin. its
promise of day when it shall be trans
mitted into a spiritual free city, not
by revolution but by elevation
If the people who walk the city of
Bristol could watch in the heavens
above this replica of their anxious,
eager. hurried life set by celestial laws
of light remote from them, yet for-|
ever repeating their story and their
destiny. a glistening and glorious
promise. what might it not do for their
civic living? Here, by some agency of
science. not yet clearly understood, the
most modern embodiment of human
and average and commonplace relation
ships, the city is set in the sky like the
vision of the New Jerusalem which
John saw Could one imagine those
streets echoing to the cry OF murder or
violence or the plant of the forsaken?
Would it city guildhall conceal public
REGULATIONS and civic neglects? Would
its house walls confine unhappy hearts
and false relations? Across the bridges
which throw their arches into blue
space would a long tide of weary. dis |
satisfied, poverty-burdened and forever
longing people endlessly flow back and
forth?
Perhaps in time a city thus over |
hung by its own "baseless fabric OF
dream" might get used to its own edo |
lon and it would be no more to 1t than
the emblems of death which the an
clients kept before their eyes in order /
that they might enjoy life all the more. |
But to the idle and unaccustomed fancy /
there seems a solemnity of beauty /
about such a vision; city in the heav- /
ems not made with mortal hands ap- |
pears at once a warning and a prophe- |
CIV. a warning of the vanished cities OF /
the past: a prophecy of the ideal posi- |
biIities of that congregation of the
masses which we call the present city /
when it shall represent the best OF
modern living with its necessary gross
ness and brutal strength lost in the
whole effect of perfect outline--Min-t
neapolis Times.