GIANT HEATHS 89 



sloping rift in the rock face, in some places so well 

 sheltered that the dust of ages lies thick upon the 

 ground, but more generally it is nothing but the 

 bed of a stream, and is exposed to the drippings 

 from the rocks above. A climb of about an hour 

 brings one to the first great terrace. There is a 

 small area of swamp, but this terrace is chiefly 

 remarkable for the wonderful luxuriance of the 

 heath-trees, which attain here their greatest growth. 

 A heath-tree is a thing entirely unlike any of the 

 trees of England ; the reader must imagine a stem 

 of the common ' ling ' magnified to a height of 

 60 or 70 or even 80 feet, but bearing leaves and 

 flowers hardly larger than those of the ' ling ' as it 

 grows in England. Huge cushions of many-coloured 

 mosses, often a foot or more deep, encircle the 

 trunks and larger branches, while the finer twigs 

 are festooned with long beards of grey lichen, which 

 give to the trees an unspeakably dreary and funereal 

 aspect. This first terrace was perhaps the most 

 difificult and tiring part of the whole ascent, for not 

 only did the heath-trees grow very close together, 

 but the ground beneath them was strewn with the 

 dead and decaying trunks of fallen trees, some of 

 them hard as bog oak, and others ready to crumble 

 at a touch, but all of them covered with a dense 

 carpet of thick moss, which necessitated a careful 

 probing before any step forward could be taken. 

 The way in which our Bakonjo porters, encumbered 

 as they were with awkward loads, hopped nimbly 



