68 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



CHAPTER IV 



Si CoUettinff 2Da^ abotje SLtalla 



It is always with a sense of approaching the most boundless 

 botanical possibilities that one penetrates into the moun- 

 tain valleys southward of the Rhone. For there, high in 

 each secluded glen, dwell species that scorn the crowded 

 slopes of tiie Oberland. In the Saasthal, in the upper- 

 most, screes, lives Campanula excisa ; in the Turtmann 

 Thai Linnaea borealis meanders through the mosses of the 

 woodland ; in the Val de Bagne Saxvfraga diapensioeides 

 huddles passionately into the inexorable sun-baked preci- 

 pices of the Pierre a Voir. And with these specialities 

 grow also all the commoner glories of the Alps, so that, 

 for one ambitious to collect in the hills, and unable to go 

 so far afield as the Tyrol, the mountains of North Italy, 

 St. Martin Vesubie, or that gardener's Eden the Col de 

 Lautaret, no more profitable advice can be given than 

 that they should put money in their purse and fare hope- 

 ful forth to Saas-Fee, Meiden, or AroUa. 



At AroUa, indeed, I had my first experience of these 

 tributary valleys of the Rhone. For the wanderer's 

 guidance I may mention that opposite each notch in the 

 vast mountains overhead that wall in the bed of the 

 Rhone three thousand feet and more beneath, there sits 

 in the flat lands over which the great river flows, a little 

 town, with a station on the railway. Thus, immeasurably 

 far above the tiny hamlet of Turtmann hangs the opening 



