ON THE MOUNTAINS 195 



the blue sow-thistle. It is a case of the giant and 

 the dwarf. This sow-thistle not a thistle is a 

 curiosity in its way. The typical alpine is a fairy. 

 Such is a necessity of its existence. The scanty 

 food, the exposure, the frequent need to pass 

 rapidly through the flowering and seeding stages, 

 all forbid strong or leisurely growth. Minuteness 

 is the broad distinction between a hill plant and 

 that of the plain. 



The sow-thistle is the only, or at least the chief, 

 exception. It is an alpine, and yet has the robust 

 growth of a Lowland form. It grows up the 

 wildest branch of the gorge. I wish to visit it, 

 and struggle up under increasing difficulties by 

 the side of a torrent which rushes ever more rudely 

 down its boulder-strewn bed. Exhausted, I sit on 

 a loose rock, upon whose surface, in course of time, 

 a soil has gathered and shrubs rooted themselves. 

 Never were such blaeberries, for number and size, 

 as grow on that rock. 



When one turns his face backward after a day's 

 ups and downs, he begins to feel his sores. There 

 is now nothing ahead to make him forgetful. His 

 pace settles down into a certain dogged, uninter- 

 ested, out-kneed paddling along, which has been 

 likened to that of the German band, 



