460 WILD FLOWEBS OF 



on the verge of Tartarus, and it was but natural to 

 expect smoke and steam. They came on rapidly in 

 the shape of a drivelling mist, which soon spread its 

 wearisome sameness around, shrouding " the Devil's 

 Kitchen," Llyn Own, and everything else in its reek- 

 ing folds. This, for a season, obliged us to call a halt, 

 and bivouac in the Satanic territory. Accordingly we 

 sat down upon the loose blocks of stone that lay near 

 the chasm before us, as if the Tartarean gates had 

 been forced by an earthquake from their massive 

 hinges and overthrown ; and while waiting for the 

 dispersion of the clouds about us, with appetites 

 whetted by the mountain air, gladly called in requisi- 

 tion the not forgotten sandwiches and brandy-bottle, 

 to reanimate our half exhausted limbs stiff with climb- 

 ing. My little "Welchman, however, kept jumping 

 about among the crags, with his tin box strapped to 

 his back, to my admiration and almost terror, and 

 soon exhibited to me the delicate Spider-wort (Antlie- 

 ricum serotinum), while I myself had plucked the Sea 

 Pink (jStatice armeria), the soft-flowered Mountain 

 Cat's-foot (Antennaria dioica), and the alpine Hawk- 

 weed (Hieracium dlpinutri). 



Turning down the bed of a streamlet among the 

 slippery rocks, we began to descend towards Cwm 

 Idwal, and here it is, where the torrent I before men- 

 tioned breaks through the barrier of Twll Du, amidst 

 a debacle of ruin, that Flora, as if to counterbalance 

 the horrors of the place, robes the sable rocks with 

 some of her choicest favourites. Here the Snowdon 

 Pink, as it is called, or Moss Campion (Silene acaulis), 

 dashes a broad gleam of rosy light upon the rock with 

 its numerous pink flowers ; here in immense profu- 



