1828.] Meditations on Mountains. 581 



rtite with which it now contends, and though composed of beds and lamince, 

 while that seems one compact mass, is yet of no soft and yielding texture ? 



Invigorated by the bath and the dew, however, your's is not the 

 mood of meditation ; and thus 'you plunge, mountainward, through the 

 fragrant coppice, the other side of which the mountain seems almost to 

 touch. Be not deceived, however ; for it will look much farther off 

 when you have come a good deal nearer to it. It may not be amiss, 

 though, to pull a few handfuls of those berries, whose glowing purple 

 from below their little neat leaves, outshines that of the choicest grape ; 

 or of those strawberries, that look so tempting by the side of the rock. 

 You need fear neither scratches nor poison ; for the mountain-berry has 

 no thorn and no stupifying effect. There are some brambles in the 

 approach, and deadly nightshade in the plain below ; but you have got 

 above them now : the air here is too keen and pure for nursing poisons ; 

 and the mushroom, which would be foetid and deadly if it grew in yon 

 \vater-meadow, would become fragrant and esculent if you transplanted 

 it here. 



You clear the coppice, and stretch forward over the moor, which you 

 now perceive extends a mile or two, before you will have much climbing. 

 Your path lies upon short heather, mixed with grass, and moss, and 

 white lichen, the last of which is delightfully elastic under your feet. 

 That stripe of greener texture than the rest, which terminates in the 

 little morass, where the cotton-grass is waving its snow-white 

 tufts, is a winter-spring. The channel is now dry and cracked, and that 

 light stuff which you see lying about, like rags or felt, is what was once 

 the softest and greenest moss living in the water. If, in the dry season, 

 you go to such a place as this, in the hope of quenching your thirst, you 

 will be disappointed. Find where the loose gravelly surface joins a 

 bank of clay, or where the solid rock appears at the bottom of a little 

 slope, and you have every chance of finding a fountain there perennial, 

 and of uniform temperature refreshing as the ice-brook in summer, and, 

 m winter, bursting up through the frozen surface, till it cover a long 

 track of the snow with clear and polished ice ; or, if it be powerful, pre- 

 serving a little vent to " the day," while all around is far, far below the 

 freezing-point. 



As you gain a little eminence, a black cloud sails past you ; the cotton- 

 grass lies level with the morass ; and the whirlwind moans in the channels 

 of the watercourses, and rustles the heather on their sides, twirling the 

 little withered pieces into the air. The whirlwind passes by you ; and 

 the cloud, faithful to its purpose, sails 011 to deliver up its precious store 

 to the mountains ; but the passing cloud cooled and condensed the air, 

 and there blows a refreshing wind from its track. 



Ha ! what is that ? the perfumes of Arabia, on a dull expanse of 

 mountain-heather, on which there is not so much as a tree of the most 

 hardy race and most stunted growth ! Look yonder, where the surface 

 shews a trace of soft blue. That is a bed of wild hyacinths, literally 

 " wasting their sweetness on the desert air " and you need no one to tell 

 you how sweet they are. 



You move onward ; the ground is low and humid, and a little shrub 

 creeps along the surface. Every foot that you now lift exhales a per- 

 fume. Is it that of the bed of wild hyacinths ? 



" Ah ! no it is something more exquisite still !". 



