A COLLECTING DAY ABOVE AROLLA 81 
is the home of so much brilliant beauty, such enormous 
peace. 
The tutelary deity of the Arolla valley is Androsace 
wmbricata. And for the Androsace you needs must go 
very high up into open spaces to which the open space 
below the Mont Collon is a crowded jungle. Looking 
out across the acres of stone, grim evidence of altitude, 
that stretch before the hotel, it is hard to realise that 
only far and far above all this do you come into the real 
openness, the real freedom of heart and soul and eye. 
The upward way leads you first of all across the rocky 
wilderness, where little dwells but Sempervivum montanum, 
and then across the stream, along whose further bank it 
continues for some time a mild ascent, beneath the shadow 
of a precipice. Sempervivum montanum need not detain 
the searcher. It is a rather undistinguished little House- 
leek, with lopsided rosettes of pale green, and heads of 
sad murrey-coloured Catherine-wheels. So, unheeding 
the small fry of the mountains, one pursues one’s way 
upwards in the grateful shadow of the cliff. Campanula 
pusila is rampant everywhere, the immense violet bells of 
Campanula Scheuchzeri glitter imperially wherever water 
distils, on wet rocks Pinguicula lifts its purple Gloxinia- 
blooms above its flattened star of viscid, carnivorous 
leaves, and everywhere Saaifraga acizoén shows its stout 
little creamy spires. Only in the moraine garden shall we 
ever be able to achieve the full charm of Saxifraga 
aeizoon. On rock-work, in cleft and border, it has high 
value and charm indeed, but set it thickly on a slope 
built only of small limestone chips, and there, alone 
against that background of broken stone, so lovely in its 
innumerable lights and shades, its tones of lilac, white 
and grey, will you get the full effect of the Saxifrage, its 
tidy masses of blue and silver rosettes, the serried solid 
blooms in their rounded spikes on abundant, sturdy stems. 
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