86 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
anything tangible or obvious to fear for one’s bodily 
safety in the way of cliffs, glaciers, crevasses, but simply 
that my spirit, on those days, was too little to cope with 
the universal Godhead of the world, too fast-riveted 
in egoism to sink itself in the divine personality. On 
the other hand, there are days when one is more worthy 
of that divine companionship, capable of losing one’s 
self and becoming God. And, on such a day, loneliness 
among the hills is strengthening and sacred. 
Nor does the beauty of the place go for much in one’s 
feelings. I don’t know that the Plan de Bertol is particu- 
larly beautiful, beyond the intoxicating loveliness of 
clean, empty air, of uncontrolled light and space. Yet 
there I felt solitude most blessed, whereas high up on the 
Col that leads over Meiden to St. Luc, in surroundings 
far more dazzling, and with the dizzying magnificence of 
the Weisshorn ruling all the mountain world, I yet was 
glad of companionship; felt the whole thing a magnificent 
painted scene, stood far outside it, without desire for 
solitude or closer communion. 
Over the grassy knolls of the Plan de Bertol one wanders 
on, trampling the golden glow of Gewm montanwm as one 
goes. ‘The close lawn becomes a carpet of colours— 
Pansies, Primulas, Gentians make its tissue. Then 
comes the streamlet, dancing down among the glacial 
buttercups from the stony moraine above. On this, in 
the sodden blue clay between the blocks, one comes on 
plants of Saxifraga biflora, drenched and draggled with 
mud. And here, too, though we are in full granitic for- 
mation, I came on one plant of Campanula cenisia. As 
for Ranunculus glacialis, it is everywhere, now, in wet 
places among the shingles. Its large, solid flowers shine 
white as snow, and in the course of years each unit has 
developed into a solid clump of a hundred plants or so, 
each separate crown, almost, carrying one of those gleam- 
