Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
valley. Mont Dore-les-Bains is a foreign thermal spa 
with a history, which tells how the Romans used to bring 
sick troop-horses to be cured of illness there when the 
legions were colonising Gaul. Thirty years ago it was 
almost an unknown spot to Britons. I remember when the 
sound of our English talking made people turn in the 
street of the little dingy Auvergnat town to look at the 
foreign barbarians. Now the renown of the virtues of the 
healing springs of Mont Dore have so travelled that all 
nations flock thither ; men and women of many nationalities 
may be met with, drinking at the Wells in the valley or 
wandering in the pinewoods that clothe the surrounding 
mountains, gathering dewberries, wild strawberries or 
whortleberries — myrtilles , as the natives call them — or 
making bouquets of the upland wild flowers, golden arnicas, 
harebells, violets, and gentians, and sweet sultan. One 
couple we met often carried a tame white cockatoo and 
let him take flights in the fir-trees. Whortleberries are 
called Hurtberries in some parts of England and, I think, 
in old days, on the Border, though Blaeberries seems the 
present Scotch name. The old Swedish was, I believe, 
blabaer , and the Icelandic blaber. Bilberry is, I think, the 
English common name, while the American Huckleberry is 
an old English name. The German name is Heidelbeere. 
In Devonshire I was told great quantities are yearly 
shipped from the Tor country to Bordeaux to be put into 
the red wine. He may believe this who likes ! I certainly 
never saw larger and finer berries than among the Tors. 
Blue Corn-flowers ( Cyanus ) grow very freely here in Auvergne, 
and indeed have been adopted as the floral emblem of the 
place ; they are painted on the glasses sold to the water- 
drinkers, and on the varied souvenirs for sale in the little 
booths in the public park. The large blue Centaury too 
grows in abundance • in the fresh meadows, and a lovely 
brown Geranium, Pheum , as well as a blue one called, I 
think, Sylvaticum , similar to the Blue Geranium of the 
Scottish Borderland. There are several very pretty species 
of Gentians, two blue, one of which is autumn-flowering. 
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