t in by the dazzling blue of the
delicate little flower of the same species (_G. verna_ ); while the
white blossoms of the grass of Parnassus, and the frailer white of the
_dryade a huit petales_, and the modest waxen flowers of the _Azalea
procumbens_ and the _airelle ponctuee_ (_Vaccineum vitis idaea_),
tempered and set off the prevailing blue. There were groves, too,
rather lower down, of Alpine roses (the first I had come across that
year), not the fringed or the green-backed species which botanists
love best, but the honest old rust-backed rhododendron, which every
Swiss traveller has been pestered with in places where the children
are one short step above mere mendicity, but, equally, which every
Swiss traveller hails with Medean delight when he comes upon it on the
mountain-side. We were now, too, in the neighbourhood of the first
created Alpen rose. The story is, that a young peasant, who had
climbed the precipices behind Oberhausen for rock-flowrets, as the
price of some maiden's love, fell at the moment when he had secured
the flowers, and was killed. From his blood the true Alpen rose
sprang, and took its colour.

We were now passing along the summit of one of the lower spurs of the
Rothhorn range, and making for the peak of the Ralligflue, which lay
considerably below us. In descending near the line of crest, we found a
large number of very deep fissures, narrow and black, some of them
extending to a great distance across the face of the hill; sometimes
they appeared as mere holes, down which we despatched stones, sometimes
as unpleasant crevasses almost hidden by flowers and the shrubs of
rhododendron. In many of these we dimly discovered accumulated snow at
the bottom, and we observed that the Alpine roses which overhung the
snow-holes were by far the deepest coloured and most beautiful we could
find.

To reach the Ralligflue, we had to cross a smooth green lawn completely
covered with the sweet vanilla orchis (_O. nigra_), which perfumed the
air almost too powerfully. No one can ever fully appreciate the grandeur
of the lion-like Niesen till he has seen it from this verdant little
paradise, on the slope near the Bergli Chalet, with a diminutive limpid
lake in the meadow at his feet, and the blue lake of Thun below. The
Kanderthal and the Simmenthal lie exposed from their entrance at the
foot of the Niesen; and when the winding Kanderthal is lost, the
Adelbodenthal takes up the telescope, and guides the