228 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



Devil's Kitchen is a black canon opening, high above the 

 lake, into the flank of the Glydyrs. Its sides are dank 

 and inaccessible, narrowed like the Symplegades, wrapped 

 eternally in a damp and rayless twilight. Here, on 

 ledges of these adamantine walls, linger rare specimens 

 of the Spider-wort. But, though I searched long, I could 

 see nothing — nor, if I had, could I have climbed up to 

 reach it. And now that, after many years, I have found 

 and collected and grown the Lhydia, I chillily announce 

 that, except for sentiment's sake, it is not worth the 

 collecting or the growing. 



Now we have done with the plainland. The stream 

 brawls down upon us over a slope like a wall, and we 

 have to breast an incline so steep that our knees are 

 against the opposing earth at every step. At first we 

 climb past stunted masses of Gentiana nivalis, dazzling in 

 their light, clear ferocity of tiny azure stars ; over great 

 rosy flowers of Trifolium alpinum, and amid the nodding 

 golden suns of Arnica montana ; over the loose trails of 

 Veronica saxatilis, brilliant with its short-lived blue blos- 

 soms, large and intense in colour, with a ring of crimson 

 at the base. Easiest and most thriving of Veronicas is this, 

 easy in every way, and a profuse, faithful seeder, my 

 favourite, almost, in its large but not very interesting race. 

 It occurs, rarely, on the Scottish mountains, and very 

 rarely indeed in its rose-coloured tona,fruticulosa. KirM, 

 guthrieana, and satureioeides are of the same nature, 

 though guthrieana is paler and more bushy ; repens 

 forms a close mat of glossy leafage, hidden from sight 

 in summer by a myriad pale flowers, large and softly 

 blue ; prostrata and rupestris are rampant, mat- and 

 curtain-forming Alpines, invaluable for the rock-garden, 

 developing sheets of azure in their time ; Jilifolia grows 

 erect into a filmy fuzz of fine greenery, starred with 

 china-blue blossoms ; bellidioeides is simply pale and 



