The continual passionate iterance ! There, in truth, 



Mountain we j iave ^he passionate whisper of the heart of 

 June, that most wonderful, that most thril- 

 ling of the voices of summer. 



It is in June, too, that one mountain charm 

 in particular may be known with rapt delight. 

 It is when one can approach mountains whose 

 outlying flanks and bases are green hills. The 

 bright green of these under-slopes, these swell- 

 ing heights and rolling uplands, is never more 

 vivid. Near, one wonders why grasses so 

 thick with white daisy and red sorrel and purple 

 orchis and blue harebell can be green at all ! 

 But that wonderful sea-green of the hills near 

 at hand gives way soon to the still more 

 wonderful blue as the heights recede. The 

 glens and wooded valleys grow paler. Rock 

 and tree and heather blend. "What colour 

 is that?" I asked a shepherd once. "The 

 blueness of blueness," he answered, in Gaelic. 

 It is so. It is not blue one sees, but the bloom 

 of blue ; as on a wild plum, it is not the purple 

 skin we note, but the amethyst bloom of purple 

 which lies upon it. It is beauty, with its own 

 loveliness upon it like a breath. Then the blue 

 deepens, or greys, as the hour and the light 

 compel. The most rare and subtle loveliness 

 is when the grey silhouette of the mountain- 

 ridge, serrated line, or freaked and tormented 



22 



