268 THE LESGHIAN MOUNTAINS. 



half frozen fruit was deliciously refreshing- after 

 our toil. But Allai gave us little time to rest, 

 so that having hurried through our meal, and spent 

 a few minutes in watching the sun battling his way 

 through the mountain mists, we fastened on the 

 climbing-irons and pursued our way up steep 

 slopes covered with forests of beeches, whose dry 

 fallen leaves scattered from under our feet and 

 revealed the treacherous black ice beneath. 



Here we came on bear tracks, and heard the cry 

 of the red deer in some beech woods on a neigh- 

 bouring mountain side. As we peered over an abyss 

 we caught sight of three ' marral,' as the natives call 

 them, far out of shot on the other side. To get to 

 them would have been a day's work ; so we could 

 only look and long; while the wild cry of another 

 stag, which we could not see, reverberated through 

 the woods, and made our hearts jump at the 

 sound. Far down in the abyss the wooded tops 

 of smaller mountains rose like islands from a tum- 

 bling sea of clouds like those we call woolsacks at 

 home ; a sea that, as evening approaches, rises higher 

 and higher, until the whole mountain top is sub- 

 merged in its cold waves. But here above the 

 clouds, out of sight of the earth which they hid, 

 all was bright as an Italian summer, in spite of the 

 snow and ice, until four o'clock in the afternoon. 

 Here, beautifying the snowy forests by their pre- 

 sence, I found t\vo varieties of primula : one, the 



