of the White Mountains, 87 



of delicate white flowers, on the very summit of the mountain, 

 and could be found here and there by the side of the brook in the 

 bof torn of the ravine. 



Clambering by a steep and dangerous path up the right side 

 of the ravine, we reach almost at once the limit beyond which 

 the ordinary flora of New England can extend no longer, and are 

 in the presence of a new group of plants comparable with those 

 of Labrador and Greenland. Here, on the plateau of the Lake 

 of the Clouds, the traveller who has ascended the giddy preci- 

 pices overhanging Tuckerman's ravine, is glad to pause that he 

 may contemplate the features of the new region which he has 

 reached. "We have left the snow behind us, except a small 

 patch which lingers on the shady side of Mount Munro ; for it is 

 only in the ravines into which it has drifted an hundred feet 

 deep or more, that it can withstand the summer heat until 

 August. We stand on a dreary waste of hard angular blocks of 

 mica slate and gneiss, that lie in rude ridges as if they had been 

 roughly raked-up by Titans who might have been trying to pile 

 Monro upon Washington; but which seem to be merely the 

 remains of the original outcropping edges of the rocks broken up 

 by the frost, but not disturbed or rounded by water. Behind us 

 is the deep trench-like ravine out of which we have climbed : 

 on the left hand a long row of secondary summits stretching out 

 from Mount Washington to the south-westward, and designated 

 by the names of a series of American statesmen. In front this 

 range descends abruptly in great wooded spurs or buttresses to 

 the valley of the Amonoosook which shines in silvery spots through 

 the trees far below. On our right hand towers the peak of Mount 

 Washington, still more than a thousand feet above us, and covered 

 with angular blocks, as if it were a pile of fragments rather than a 

 solid rock. These stones all around and up to the summit of the 

 mountain, are tinted pale green by the map lichen (Lecidea Geogra- 

 phica) which tinges in the same way the alpine summits of European 

 mountains. Between the blocks and on their sheltered sides nestle 

 the alpine flowering plants, of which 20 species or more may be 

 collected on this shoulder of the mountain, and some of which ex- 

 tend themselves to the very summit, where Alsine Groenlandica 

 and the little tufts of deep green leaves of Diapensia Lapponica 

 with a few Carices seem to luxuriate. Animal life accompanies 

 these plants to the summit, near which I saw a family of the 

 snow bird {Plectrophanes nivalis) evidently summer resident* 



