THE MOUNTAIN BOG 219 
Or again, perhaps, it may be a level tract I know, 
beyond the last white limestone pavement at the base of 
Ingleborough. ‘The great mountain, close overhead, lies 
lazily against heavy cloud-masses in the west, the long 
sleepy lines of its eastern slope looming dark, in blue and 
violet, against the gloom behind. And at one’s feet lies 
a strange ground, like the foundation of a vast Cyclopean 
temple, built so long ago, and so very long ago destroyed, 
that its very foundation-stones are now rubbed smooth 
and shapeless by the tireless persistence of wind and rain, 
through countless ages. Underfoot lie couched amorphous 
masses of white rock, flush with the soft fine grass, their 
flat surface worn and rounded into innumerable hollows, 
bays and inlets, held by invading vegetation, small and 
Alpine. Water pervades the place too, and shines in 
patches of pure silver here and there in the depressions of 
the boulder, or spreads in brown patches that reflect the 
sky and cloud above. And here, on the damp stone 
itself, Sedum villosum, lovely treasure in a tiresome race, 
lifts its large waxy stars of soft pink on tiny, two-inch 
stems; here the common Eyebright grows dwarf and 
pretty ; here Primula farinosa illumines the greyness of 
the rock, the russet of the grass, with the rosy heads 
of her blossom; and here, in undrained hollows of each 
slab, where humus has gathered from a hundred thou- 
sand generations of dead plants, Arenaria gothica spreads 
his wee brilliant branches of green, and opens his big 
snowy stars. ‘The place stands so high that its horizon 
seems the rim of the world. None of the valleys can be 
guessed ; to the west the dominant mass of Ingleborough 
fills the sky; to the east, over the last edge of the up- 
land, all that can be seen is the leonine bulk of Peny- 
ghent, far away across six miles and more of invisible 
valley and fell. And the silent loneliness of this stony 
level is august and absorbing; rarely, now and again, it 
