THE MOUNTAIN BOG 219 



Or again, perhaps, it may be a level tract I know, 

 beyond the last white limestone pavement at the base of 

 Ingleborough. The great mountain, close overhead, lies 

 lazily against heavy cloud-masses in the west, the long 

 sleepy lines of its eastern slope looming dark, in blue and 

 violet, against the gloom behind. And at one's feet lies 

 a strange ground, like the foundation of a vast Cyclopean 

 temple, built so long ago, and so very long ago destroyed, 

 that its very foundation-stones are now rubbed smooth 

 and shapeless by the tireless persistence of wind and rain, 

 through countless ages. Underfoot lie couched amorphous 

 masses of white rock, flush with the soft fine grass, their 

 flat surface worn and rounded into innumerable hollows, 

 bays and inlets, held by invading vegetation, small and 

 Alpine. Water pervades the place too, and shines in 

 patches of pure silver here and there in the depressions of 

 the boulder, or spreads in brown patches that reflect the 

 sky and cloud above. Arid here, on the damp stone 

 itself, Sedum villosum, lovely treasure in a tiresome race, 

 lifts its large waxy stars of soft pink on tiny, two-inch 

 stems ; here the common Eyebright grows dwarf and 

 pretty ; here Primula farhiosa illumines the greyness of 

 the rock, the russet of the grass, with the rosy heads 

 of her blossom ; and here, in undrained hollows of each 

 slab, where humus has gathered from a hundred thou- 

 sand generations of dead plants, Arenaria gothica spreads 

 his wee brilliant branches of green, and opens his big 

 snowy stars. The place stands so high that its horizon 

 seems the rim of the world. None of the valleys can be 

 guessed ; to the west the dominant mass of Ingleborough 

 fills the sky ; to the east, over the last edge of the up- 

 land, all that can be seen is the leonine bulk of Peny- 

 ghent, far away across six miles and more of invisible 

 valley and fell. And the silent loneliness of this stony 

 level is august and absorbing ; rarely, now and again, it 



