84 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



in cultivation. Then, high above, solid rock, reddish, 

 granitic, begins to loom overhead. The track reaches it. 

 Now we are on the territory of Androsace imbricata. 

 Androsace imbricata is within reach — perhaps even within 

 sight. But the keenest search fails to discover any of 

 those expected silvery cushions nestling into crevices of 

 the cliff. 



So our upward way continues. Suddenly there is 

 nothing more above us. In another instant we have 

 topped fii'at long dark slope, and emerge, dazzled, into 

 the full glare of day. Up and down before us lie 

 unrolled the lawns of the Plan de Bertol — one golden fire, 

 in the sunlight, of Geum montanum and other little yellow 

 glories of the grass. Looking back across the invisible 

 deep gulf beneath us, we seem on a level with the mid- 

 most snow-patches of Mont Collon itself. Our vast, sun- 

 flooded tract of colour is closed on the right by a barren 

 wall of mountain. To the left, high above us, stretches 

 a huge amphitheatre of granite cliffs, from whose feet a 

 wilderness of broken stone flows away down towards the 

 grass. A moraine — ice and stone and glacier-mud and 

 water — mounts beyond this from the stream's head to the 

 head of the glen, and on the right, above other stone 

 slopes, a snow-field, daunting, cold, and azure (for the sun 

 has not yet touched it), leads upwards to the Col de Bertol. 

 Now I know that my quest is achieved, for, all round 

 that amphitheatre is a classical station for Androsace im- 

 bricata. Meanwhile my companions are more eager to 

 scale the Col de Bertol, whence, from the Hut, the climber 

 is rewarded by a view over the Val d'Herens to the Dent 

 Blanche. I, for my part, having no love for snowfields in 

 themselves, prefer to spend my day in the more placid 

 delights of the Plan de Bertol. Accordingly the others 

 depart on their way, and I am left alone. 



To be alone in wide, great places is sometimes too 



