Part I. A LITTLE TOUR IN THE ALPS. 87 



vented that. Several weeks elapsed, and I crossed the Alps 

 twice, before I again got back to the hotel at Visp. I left my 

 luggage there, took instructions from the landlord as to the 

 " road," and started about ten o'clock on a rather dull morn- 

 ing. I soon overtook an individual, who told me he was a 

 guide, hunted the chamois when there was little else to do, and, 

 better than all, was going to Saas. It was lucky that I met him, 

 for, though an inexperienced traveller might make his way 

 through this tortuous valley in ordinary weather, such weather as 

 I encountered in it would puzzle one in a familiar district. Com- 

 pared to the enchanting shores of the lake I had passed the day 

 before, this dark valley, with its deeply worn river-bed, and vast 

 sides of gloomy rock, looked anything but a cheerful introduction 

 to the Alps ; but fortunately I had other resources than those of 

 the landscape or the sky, and as yet the weather permitted of en- 

 joying them, for here were countless tufts of the interesting Cob- 

 web Houseleek {Sempervivum. arachnoideum), a not common, 

 though always admired, inhabitant of our gardens. It was the 

 first time I had ever met with it in a wild state, and cushioned in 

 tufts, over the bare rocks, in the spaces between the stones that 

 here and there had been built up to support the side of the path- 

 way, and in almost every chink, 1 could have gathered thou- 

 sands of plants of it. 



Although some of the Houseleeks are among the most interest- 

 ing and singular of all dwarf plants, many persons do not know 

 a single kind, except it be the common one. They are the suc- 

 culent plants of the Alps : their geometrically carved little ro- 

 settes may be compared to miniatures of the great stately Agaves 

 of America. Some have rosettes as large as a saucer ; some are 

 small enough to be covered with a thimble ; they vary in the hue 

 of their leaves from a decided glaucous tone to light green ; some 

 are ciliated at the margins of the leaves, while the Cobweb one 

 is white from a densely interwoven cottony down. They are 

 amongst the hardiest of all plants, enduring any weather, and 

 living even in smoky London, where many things people gene- 

 rally think much more hardy and vigorous quickly perish. 

 There is not a window-sill in London to which the light of the 

 sun can occasionally penetrate on which they may not be grown 

 either in pots or boxes, while in all open gardens they merely 

 require to be kept free from weeds and " left to nature ; " though 

 even in our largest scientific gardens it is common to see them 



