WATER BORDERS 



of loose gravel not wholly water leached 

 affords a plant footing, and even in such 

 unpromising surroundings there is a choice 

 of locations. There is never going to be 

 any communism of mountain herbage, their 

 affinities are too sure. Full in the runnels 

 of snow water on gravelly, open spaces in 

 the shadow of a drift, one looks to find 

 buttercups, frozen knee-deep by night, and 

 owning no desire but to ripen their fruit 

 above the icy bath. Soppy little plants of 

 the portulaca and small, fine ferns shiver 

 under the drip of falls and in dribbling 

 crevices. The bleaker the situation, so it 

 is near a stream border, the better the cas- 

 siope loves it. Yet I have not found it 

 on the polished glacier slips, but where 

 the country rock cleaves and splinters in 

 the high windy headlands that the wild 

 sheep frequents, hordes and hordes of the 

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