KTAADN. 
61 
tops flat and spreading, and their foliage blue, and nipt 
with cold, as if for centuries they had ceased growing 
upward against the bleak sky, the solid cold. I walked 
some good rods erect upon the tops of these trees, which 
were overgrown. with moss and mountain-cranberries. 
It seemed that in the course of time they had filled up 
the intervals between the huge rocks, and the cold wind 
had uniformly levelled all over. Here the principle of 
vegetation was hard put to it. There was apparently 
a belt of this kind running quite round the mountain, 
though, perhaps, nowhere so remarkable as here. Once, 
slumping through, I looked down ten feet, into a dark 
and cavernous region, and saw the stem of a spruce, on 
whose top I stood, as on a mass of coarse basket-work, 
fully nine inches in diameter at the ground. These 
holes were bears’ dens, and the bears were even then 
at home. This was the sort of garden I made my way 
over , for an eighth of a mile, at the risk, it is true, of 
treading on some of the plants, not seeing any path 
through it, — certainly the most treacherous and porous 
country I ever travelled. 
“ Nigh, foundered on he fares, 
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, 
Half flying.” 
But nothing could exceed the toughness of the twigs, — 
not one snapped under my weight, for they had slowly 
grown. Having slumped, scrambled, rolled, bounced, 
and walked, by turns, over this scraggy country, I ar¬ 
rived upon a side-hill, or rather side-mountain, where 
rocks, gray, silent rocks, were the flocks and herds that 
pastured, chewing a rocky cud at sunset. They looked 
at me with hard gray eyes, without a bleat or a low. 
This brought me to the skirt of a cloud, and bounded 
