114 ALPINE FLOWERS AND GARDENS 



And if, after some days, or even weeks, of this 

 unequal rule, the fog will commence to rise and 

 envelop us in our turn — well, there is compensation 

 enough for all who love Nature in a weird, 

 mysterious mood. The mountains are the grander 

 for the 



* White mists which choke the vale, and blot the sides 

 Of the bewildered hills.' 



They tower up higher than ever they do on a clear^ 

 still day. All that we do not see of them adds 

 enormously to the importance of the glimpses we 

 catch here and there. As the turbulent veil of 

 grey-white mist rives in places, giving us peeps 

 of the snows and blue-green ice of some mighty 

 glacier, or, maybe, of the warm red and orange 

 of some Bilberry-covered slope, the effect is fairy- 

 like in the extreme, and we wish to see nor more 

 nor less. Moreover, the scene is for ever changing. 

 Endless are the combinations as the ceaselessly 

 shifting mass of mist thins and evaporates here and 

 thicikens and reforms elsewhere. And when from 

 out the mist comes the piercing, scream-like call 

 of some sentinel Marmot on the far-off rocks ; the 

 shrill whistle of the Choughs now descending from 

 the region of the glaciers ; the twittering of 



