The Legend of the White Reindeer 
went next; the birch and willow climbed up 
half the slope. Here, nothing grows but creep- 
ing plants and moss. The plain itself is pale 
grayish green, one vast expanse of reindeer- 
moss, but warmed at spots into orange by great 
beds of polytrichum, and, in sunnier nooks, 
deepened toa herbal green. The rocks that are 
scattered everywhere are of a delicate lilac, but 
each is variegated with spreading frill-edged 
plasters of gray-green lichen or orange powder- 
streaks and beauty-spots of black. These rocks 
have great power to hold the heat, so that each 
of them is surrounded by a little belt of heat- 
loving plants that could not otherwise live so 
high. Dwarfed representatives of the birch 
and willow both are here, hugging the genial 
rock, as an old French Aaditant hugs his stove 
in winter-time, spreading their branches over it, 
instead of in the frigid air. A foot away is 
seen a chillier belt of heath, and farther off, 
_ colder, where none else can grow, is the omni- 
present gray-green reindeer-moss that gives its 
color to the upland. The hollows are still filled 
with snow, though now it is June. But each of 
these white expanses is shrinking, spending it- 
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