Part I. 



A LITTLE TOUR IN THE ALPS. 



117 



ourselves to plants not British, and — climb. That exertion is 

 above all things necessary ; the vast slopes of shattered rock 

 seem interminable — an hour's hard work brings you to a point 

 that you thought you could reach in five minutes, and this point, 

 instead of proving the resting-place and exploring-ground you 

 had expected it to be, merely shows you that still the wide and 

 mighty mass of shattered rock creeps upwards higher and 

 higher, far beyond your powers of approach, until at last the 



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Fig. 73. — A glacier. 



wall of ice, " durable as iron, sets death-like its white teeth 

 against us." On a great ridge beneath it are some scattered 

 fragments of vegetation rooting deeply among the stones, and 

 gaining a scanty subsistence from the sandy grit which results 

 from the decomposition and friction of the fields of brittle rock. 

 The opposite-leaved Saxifrage is a perfect mass of flower ; you 

 cannot see anything but flowers on its dense cushions, here as 

 beautiful in this awful solitude as the choicest flowers of climes 

 . genial enough for the humming-bird. Here and there a large 

 yellow flower is seen, which proves to be Gewn reptans, a fine 



