86 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



anything tangible or obvious to fear for one's bodily 

 safety in the way of cliffs, glaciers, crevasses, but simply 

 that my spirit, on those days, was too little to cope with 

 the universal Godhead of the world, too fast-riveted 

 in egoism to sink itself in the divine personality. On 

 the other hand, there are days when one is more worthy 

 of that divine companionship, capable of losing one's 

 self and becoming God. And, on such a day, loneliness 

 among the hills is strengthening and sacred. 



Nor does the beauty of the place go for much in one's 

 feelings. I don't know that the Plan de Bertol is particu- 

 larly beautiful, beyond the intoxicating loveliness of 

 clean, empty air, of uncontrolled light and space. Yet 

 there I felt solitude most blessed, whereas high up on the 

 Col that leads over Meiden to St. Luc, in surroundings 

 far more dazzling, and with the dizzying magnificence of 

 the Weisshorn ruling all the mountain world, I yet was 

 glad of companionship ; felt the whole thing a magnificent 

 painted scene, stood far outside it, without desire for 

 solitude or closer communion. 



Over the grassy knolls of the Plan de Bertol one wanders 

 on, trampling the golden glow of Geum montanum as one 

 goes. The close lawn becomes a carpet of colours — 

 Pansies, Primulas, Gentians make its tissue. Then 

 comes the streamlet, dancing down among the glacial 

 buttercups from the stony moraine above. On this, in 

 the sodden blue clay between the blocks, one comes on 

 plants of Saxifraga biflora, drenched and draggled with 

 mud. And here, too, though we are in full granitic for- 

 mation, I came on one plant of Campanula cenisia. As 

 for Ranunculus glacialis, it is everywhere, now, in wet 

 places among the shingles. Its large, solid flowers shine 

 white as snow, and in the course of years each unit has 

 developed into a solid clump of a hundred plants or so, 

 each separate crown, almost, carrying one of those gleam- 



