58 ALPINE FLOWERS AND GARDENS 



will sound a Munchausen-like exaggeration, but 

 it is only the simple truth. It is not every summer 

 that the sun has power to rid the sheltered little 

 Alpine valleys of the winter snow ; often must 

 many a plant beget its soul in patience for at least 

 two years, comforting itself, 'in the mad maze of 

 hope,' with thoughts of all it will accomplish during 

 the brief interval of sun and air when it will once 

 more put forth its flowers. 



I remember, on one notable occasion, coming 

 upon a more than ordinary instance of this re- 

 awakening of Alpine plant-life from an abnormally 

 long seclusion. It was in August, and late in 

 August, in the little, secluded valley (the French 

 have a better word vallon] of Susanfe, at the 

 back of the Dent du Midi, and between that 

 mountain and the Glacier de Soix. There, in an 

 extensive hollow, lying beneath the rocks and cliffs 

 which mount to the glacier above, was a large bed 

 of ice and snow doing its best to melt and disappear 

 whilst yet there was a chance. This ice was evidently 

 not of one winter's making. Probably there is 

 always more or less of it here according to the 

 sway which summer can obtain. And yet here, all 

 around the edge of this ice, in the rusty, sodden 

 turf, were springing up, with all the haste of 



