228 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
Devil's Kitchen is a black cafion opening, high above the 
lake, into the flank of the Glydyrs. Its sides are dank 
and inaccessible, narrowed like the Symplegades, wrapped 
eternally in a damp and rayless twilight. Here, on 
ledges of these adamantine walls, linger rare specimens 
of the Spider-wort. But, though I searched long, I could 
see nothing—nor, if I had, could I have climbed up to 
reach it. And now that, after many years, I have found 
and collected and grown the Lioydia, I chillily announce 
that, except for sentiment’s sake, it is not worth the 
collecting or the growing. 
Now we have done with the plainland. The stream 
brawls down upon us over a slope like a wall, and we 
have to breast an incline so steep that our knees are 
against the opposing earth at every step. At first we 
climb past stunted masses of Gentiana nivalis, dazzling in 
their light, clear ferocity of tiny azure stars; over great 
rosy flowers of Trifolium alpinum, and amid the nodding 
golden suns of Arnica montana; over the loose trails of 
Veronica saxatilis, brilliant with its short-lived blue blos- 
soms, large and intense in colour, with a ring of crimson 
at the base. Easiest and most thriving of Veronicas is this, 
easy in every way, and a profuse, faithful seeder, my 
favourite, almost, in its large but not very interesting race. 
It occurs, rarely, on the Scottish mountains, and very 
rarely indeed in its rose-coloured form, fruticulosa. Kirk, 
guthrieana, and satureioeides are of the same nature, 
though guthrieana is paler and more bushy; repens 
forms a close mat of glossy leafage, hidden from sight 
in summer by a myriad pale flowers, large and softly 
blue ; prostrata and rupestris are rampant, mat- and 
curtain-forming Alpines, invaluable for the rock-garden, 
developing sheets of azure in their time; filifoha grows 
erect into a filmy fuzz of fine greenery, starred with 
china-blue blossoms;  bellidioeides is simply pale and 
