68 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
CHAPTER IV 
A Collecting Day abobe Arolla 
Ir is always with asense of approaching the most boundless 
botanical possibilities that one penetrates into the moun- 
tain valleys southward of the Rhone. For there, high in 
each secluded glen, dwell species that scorn the crowded 
slopes of the Oberland. In the Saasthal, in the upper- 
most screes, lives Campanula excisa; in the ‘Turtmann 
Thal Linnaea borealis meanders through the mosses of the 
woodland; in the Val de Bagne Saxifraga diapensioeides 
huddles passionately into the inexorable sun-baked preci- 
pices of the Pierre a Voir. And with these specialities 
grow also all the commoner glories of the Alps, so that, 
for one ambitious to collect in the hills, and unable to go 
so far afield as the Tyrol, the mountains of North Italy, 
St. Martin Vesubie, or that gardener’s Eden the Col de 
Lautaret, no more profitable advice can be given than 
that they should put money in their purse and fare hope- 
ful forth to Saas-Fée, Meiden, or Arolla. 
At Arolla, indeed, I had my first experience of these 
tributary valleys of the Rhone. For the wanderer’s 
guidance I may mention that opposite each notch in the 
vast mountains overhead that wall in the bed of the 
Rhone three thousand feet and more beneath, there sits 
in the flat lands over which the great river flows, a little 
town, with a station on the railway. Thus, immeasurably 
far above the tiny hamlet of ‘Turtmann hangs the opening 
