A SWISS INTERLUDE 165 



of a qualified " cook." The result is a sham — pretentious 

 and inedible — which yields a fine profit to the hotel 

 companies, and is erroneously believed by the travelling 

 crowds of to-day to be French cookery! In reality it 

 is a new device for bringing the " catering " in all hotels 

 in the great holiday centres under a monopolist control. 

 The scheme is similar to that to which the continental 

 railway companies have yielded in leasing to a well- 

 known company the restaurant and sleeping arrange- 

 ments on their trains, with the result of causing much 

 misery to travellers and profit to themselves and to the 

 monopolists. 



Owing to^ differences in exposure and soil, the 

 meadowland above Argentiere showed a fascinating 

 variety of colour. Here was an acre of the large- 

 flowered purple geranium, interspersed with the big 

 Alpine yellow rattle (a greedy root-parasite) ; there 

 (near some pine trees) a mass of the yellow anemone 

 (Anemone sulfurea) ; farther on a whole meadow, blue 

 with the abundance of large hairbells and viper's bugloss. 

 Close by, in the damper parts of the valley descending 

 from the Col des Montets, three or four acres of meadow- 

 land were white, so thickly were they covered with tall 

 plants of the distinguished-looking white buttercup 

 (Ranunculus aconitifolius). In some parts, among these 

 dignified Ranunculi, the plump yellow heads of the 

 globe-flower (Trollius), also a kind of buttercup, were 

 abundant. Overshadowed by these larger plants, or 

 growing up between them, were orchids, plantains, poly- 

 gonums, and many others. The most beautiful plant 

 in these meadows was St. Bruno's lily, which we found 

 in abundance on a steep bank. It is named after the 

 founder of the Carthusian order, whose monastery (the 

 Grande Chartreuse), first established when William the 



