POCKETS OF SPRING 91 



clouds have delivered it. North or south or east or 

 west, it must flow away, and where it began to flow 

 yesterday it will flow again to-day. So our streaks 

 of tree-decked gullies wind and straighten in all 

 directions. In one the golden oaks are mingled with 

 soft green rowans and silver-birch, a lady among 

 trees, though not so feathery as when she queens the 

 lowlands. The thicket is snowed with hawthorn, 

 silvered with sallow cotton, reddened with cornel, ink- 

 spotted with Scotch pine. Another gulley, pointing 

 more westerly, is all bursting with the grey-green of 

 ash, another sparkles with sycamore, another that has 

 reached a lower level with greater speed has alder all 

 along the stream and flowery meadows beyond. 



A goat-path threading the wall of a precipice leads 

 us down to a wooded tableland beneath our frowning 

 moor. We could toss a biscuit into the tops of the 

 feathery larches three hundred feet below, and they 

 swim up to meet us as we pass down the steep 

 gradient of our mountain-stairs. It is on the cool 

 side of the mountain, the compass tells us so, though 

 the sun is beating on it fiercely enough at this hour 

 of the day. That which seemed a flat tableland is 

 carved by incipient becks still more extravagantly 

 than the longer slopes, and we find ourselves clamber- 

 ing amidst a perfect perplexity of green banks, 

 bouldered fissures, thickets, and open spaces. In 

 one pocket of this small Switzerland the hawthorn 

 is in full blossom, with a spray of lingering blackthorn 

 to keep it company, another has bluebells and red 

 campion in rich profusion, and a third is on this day 

 of mid-June a perfect picture of rather early April. 

 The larches, green after blossoming, stand round in 



