208 THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE CHAP. 
tenderness he may, indeed, see in the sky or 
in a flower, but this grave tenderness of the 
far-away hill-purples he cannot conceive.” 
“T-do not know,” he says elsewhere, “ any 
district possessing a more pure or uninter- 
rupted fulness of mountain character (and 
that of the highest order), or which appears to 
have been less disturbed by foreign agencies, 
than that which borders the course of the 
Trient between Valorsine and Martigny. The 
paths which lead to it, out of the valley of the 
Rhone, rising at first in steep circles among 
the walnut trees, hike winding stairs among 
the pillars of a Gothic tower, retire over the 
shoulders of the hills into a valley almost 
unknown, but thickly inhabited by an indus- 
trious and patient population. Along the 
ridges of the rocks, smoothed by old glaciers, 
into long, dark, billowy swellings, like the 
backs of plunging dolphins, the peasant 
watches the slow colouring of the tufts of moss 
and roots of herb, which, little by little, gather 
a feeble soil over the iron substance; then, 
supporting the narrow strip of clinging ground 
with a few stones, he subdues it to the spade, 
