118 



ALPINE FLOWERS 



[PART I. 



a man returning with his marketings from the valley," the 

 guide replies ! He must have formed but a small obstacle to 

 that ponderous mass big as a small cottage which fell from 



its bed and leaped from point 

 to point, at last right over the 

 torrent-bed, resting on a little 

 lawn of rich grass and bright 

 flowers on the other side. 



Ten minutes afterwards we 

 came to a group of three more 

 rough wooden crosses, and 

 loosely fixed in the stones at 

 its sides. They marked the 

 spot where two women and a 

 man had been buried by an 

 avalanche. " And how," said 

 I, " do you recover people's 

 bodies who are thus over- 

 whelmed?" "We wait till 

 the snow melts in spring, 

 and then find and bury them." 

 In many places along this 

 valley these wooden crosses, 

 marking the scene of deaths 



An Alpine Waterfall. from Hke caugeS) occurred SO 



thickly as to remind one of a cemetery. 



In the wide valleys and level land about the lakes life 

 is as easy as need be ; but where man creeps up to occupy the 

 last tufts of verdure that are spread out where the Alps defy 

 him with forts of rock and fields of ice and snow, it is very 

 hard. Even the procuring of the necessaries of life makes him 

 liable to dangers of which in our own country we have no 

 experience ; almost every commodity used has to be dragged 

 up these valleys on the backs of men or mules from the 

 villages and towns in the Ehone valley ; while in their 

 dwellings, made of stems of the Pine, and usually placed on 

 spots likely to be free from danger from avalanches, they are 

 sometimes buried alive. 



