226 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
blooms of Soldanella alpina, which show that the snow 
has only lately been melted from that deep gully, and 
the roseate heads of Primula farinosa tell the same tale. 
Then suddenly, as we climb, a splashing violence of blue 
assails our eyes. It is the first tuft of Gentiana bavarica, 
not to desert us now until we reach the final wastes of 
stone and the realm of its cousin brachyphylla. 
No colour that I know can touch that of the Bavarian 
Gentian as you see it among the lush emerald grasses of 
the mountain marshes—a blue, thanks to itself and its 
setting, of the most pungent solid sapphire, rich and 
dense. Gentiana bavarica is always beautiful; but I 
think I never saw it lovelier than one day in late autumn 
on the Brienzer Rothhorn. I had misguidedly made the 
ascent of that hackneyed peak to see if by any chance I 
could hap on Ranunculus rutaefolius, which is reported 
from the slopes towards Sarnen. [arly snows were 
already descending, and the nights were hard with frost. 
All day I toiled and caught nothing, slithering perilously 
about on the glazed, rotten rocks of the northern cliffs, 
after various alluring-looking buttercups, that always 
turned out to be ordinary alpestris. So I gave up the 
struggle and began to stroll down from the peak. 
October had sent all the plants to their rest, and nothing 
brilliant was to be seen. The air, too, was clear and 
cold with the nip of autumn, filled with the indefinable 
oppressive anguish of the world’s yearly death. Far 
already on her downward journey was Our Lady Perse- 
phone, carrying the flowers with Her to the underworld ; 
and the frozen breath of Hades floated up through the 
Gates of Death thrown wide for Her coming. And then, 
in a little hollow, dank with molten snow-water, browned 
and rotten with frost, I came upon a blooming crowd of 
Bavarian Gentians. ‘Their poor, brave flowers were half- 
congealed, half-melted with soaking damp and frost, yet 
