The Nine are mere reflections of the low-declined, true sun on "surrounding" frozen haze or mist, in extremely cold weather. When this icy fog seems--merely seems, of course,--to touch and surround the true sun, the illusions known as false suns are apt to appear. They obey some optical code of laws or signals understood best perhaps by themselves, and will sometimes disappear in a moment like a flock of timid "sun birds" (or wild geese--see note 8.) Their design apparently is to cheer and escort their illustrious sire in his otherwise lonesome trip through a frozen, desolate zone. Some Chinese accounts call them "children"--"children of the sun," etc., etc. There is a reference to this frozen mist, in Verne's "Fur Country," reading as follows: "It is not a mist or fog,' he said to his companions, 'it is frost-rime,' a dense vapor which remains in a state of complete congelation. But whether a fog or a frozen mist, this phenomenon was none the less to be regretted for it rose a hundred feet at least above the level of the sea, and it was so opaque that the colonists could not see each other when only two or three paces apart."--Danvers' translation, p. 288. It should be remarked that the frozen haze which breeds the false suns is found only "at the bottom of," or "below," the mountain ranges or "branches" of our North American Mulberry Tree. The false suns speedily disappear from the view of the observer who climbs up out of the thick stratum of frozen fog or mist and ascends the nearest "Branch." Such observations are completely in accord with the ancient Chinese declaration that Nine of the suns are to be seen "below" (=hia=) or "at the bottom of" the Branches, and One "above" the Branches. The suns (see note 9) are not said to be "in the Branches." Nine are "below" (=hia=) and One "above" (=shang=); a remark as true today as it ever was. The "Morea" (about fifty miles long), in Greece, was so named because it was supposed to resemble the leaf of a =morus= or mulberry. And similarly North America was considered by Mexican and Chinese mythologists to exhibit some resemblance to a mulberry,--the Helpful Mulberry (or =Fu-Sang=). The one comparison is just as fanciful or reasonable as the other. Nor can it be denied that North America presents some likeness to a Tree,--towering aloft like the Tree of the Prophet Daniel, which was seen from the ends of the earth. Here Columbia lights up her Tree and welcomes the Neighbors with a smile.