9° 



ALPINE FLOWERS. 



Part I. 



ous-looking from almost perpendicularly rising hills of loose 

 stone. Presently a little rough weather-beaten wooden cross 

 was passed beside the footway. " Why a cross here ? " said I 

 to the guide. " That great stone or rock 

 you see, killed, in its way down, a man 

 returning with his marketings from the 

 valley," he replies. Poor fellow ! he must 

 have formed but a small obstacle to that 

 ponderous mass — hard as iron and big as 

 a small cottage — which fell from its bed 

 with such impetuosity that it leaped from 

 point to point, and at last right over the 

 torrent-bed, resting on a little lawn of rich 

 grass and bright flowers on the other side. 

 Ten minutes afterwards we came to a 

 group of three more rough wooden crosses, 

 almost projecting into the pathway, and 

 loosely fixed in the stones at its sides. 

 They marked the spot where three human 

 beings, two women and a man, had been 

 buried by an avalanche. " And how," said 

 I, "do you recover -people's bodies who 

 are thus overwhelmed.?" "We wait till 

 the snow melts in spring, and then find and 

 bury them." If our interesting friends the'lrish could be traced 

 back to these valleys, one could easily explain the origin of their 

 expression " kilt entirely ! " It is no exaggeration to state that in 

 many places along this valley these wooden crosses, marking the 

 scene of deaths from hke causes, occurred so thickly as to remind 

 one of a cemetery. I should not have minded seeing one or two 

 instances, but to meet them within view of each other was highly 

 suggestive. A railway collision would seem to offer, capital 

 chances of escape compared to what one would have in case 

 of being in the way of any crumbling matter in these parts. 



We have all heard of the merry Swiss boy, but few of us 

 have an idea of the hard and fearful nature of the lives of the 

 peasantry of the elevated parts of this country. In the wide 

 valleys and level land about the lakes life is as easy as need be ; 

 but where man creeps up to occupy the last tufts of verdure that 

 are spread out, where the Alps defy him with fortifications of 

 rock and fields of ice and snow, there his IJfe is not an enviable 



Fig. 60. 



