94 



ALPINE FLOWERS. 



Part I. 



during the winter, my guide pointed to some parts of it peculiarly 

 shaky, with the remark, " We had better run past here, as the 

 heavy rains may have loosened some of the stones ; " and run 

 we did with all speed. Soon the rain began to be mingled 

 with an occasional wet flake of snow, which in another half-hour 

 was descending in a regular heavy fall ; and as we gradually 

 ascended, soon every surface was covered with it, except that of 

 the torrent beneath, which roared away with as much noise as if 

 the waters of a world, and not those of one hollow in a grea,t range, 

 were being dashed down its wonderfully picturesque bed — some- 

 times cutting its way through walls of solid rock of great depth, 

 at others dashing over wastes of worn and huge stones, carried 

 down and ground by its action. Often we crossed it on small 



Fig. 63. — -A disputed passage. 



rough bridges of pine-wood, fragile looking, heavily laden with 

 fresh-faUen snow, not offering a very agreeable passage to the 

 nervous. Happily, in crossing we did not encounter any unex- 

 postulating but stubborn denizen of the mountains hurrying 

 down from the snow-clad pastures. The hissing splash of many 

 cascades accompanied the tumult of the river-bed — many of 

 these born of the melting snow and previous heavy rain, the 

 main ones much swollen by it. The air being simply full of 

 large downy flakes of snow, the pines on the white mountain 

 side began to look quite sharp-coned from the pressure of its 

 weight on their branches. Our shoulders, too, began to be 

 laden ; and, to get rid of the load, we were now and then 

 obliged to step under the cave-like sides of some of the great 

 boulders by the wayside and shake it off. 



We had by this time evidently got into a region abounding 



