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Updated: June 8, 2025
There was as yet no choking under-growth of vegetation; nothing but mosses, woodbine, and ferns; and between the boles of the trees you could trace vista after vista, as between the slender pillars of a cathedral aisle. John pointed out all this to Miss March, especially noticing the peculiar character of the two species of trees the masculine and feminine fir and beech.
Mosses and lichens cover them, as also the birch, the dwarf willow, and a variety of shrubs; but where the soil is drier, and humus has been able to accumulate, a variety of herbaceous flowering plants, some of which are familiar also in western Europe, make their appearance.
I feasted on the rocks and wild verdure, the mosses and ferns and lichen, the scrub forest and tangled undergrowth, among which we plunged and scrambled; above all, on those vast leafy walls which shut in the glen, and almost took away my breath with their towering lonely grandeur. All this time Dr. Sandford was as busy as a bee, in quest of something.
It filled the stone trough, which, being old and grey and steady, kept it still, and bade it reflect the blue sky and the gorgeous mosses; but the trough soon overflowed, and then the water slipped over the side, and ran off in a wayside stream. "Winter is gone!" it spluttered as it ran. "Winter is gone, winter-is-gone, winterisgone!"
Oak and beech, with innumerable roses and wild vines, hanging in beautiful confusion among their branches, were in many places scattered among the evergreens. The earth was carpeted with various mosses and creeping plants, and though still in the month of March, not a trace of the nakedness of winter could be seen.
At the base of such a mountain we have all the luxuriance of growth characteristic of the tropical forest, the Palms, the Bananas, the Bread-trees, the Mimosas; higher up, these give way to a different kind of growth, corresponding to our Oaks, Chestnuts, Maples, etc.; as these wane, on the loftier slopes comes in the Pine forest, fading gradually, as it ascends, into a dwarfish growth of the same kind; and this at last gives way to the low creeping Mosses and Lichens of the greater heights, till even these find a foothold no longer, and the summit of the mountain is clothed in perpetual snow and ice.
Surely there is no mode of travelling on earth so enchanting as this; we went gliding over the blue water, with a sea-garden of coral, marine mosses, and brilliantly coloured fish below us, the white sails bellying before the breeze, the natives singing, the shore with its palms and little villages half hidden in green foliage slipping by, the mountains standing high against the sky, while on the other side of the barrier reef the surf pounded in impotent fury, throwing up a hedge of white, foaming spray.
But down to the flowering nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest is under the rough grasses and the mosses of the mound; a mere tunnel beneath the fibres and matted surface.
"And then the moss decays and makes soil for the ferns?" "I suppose so." Daisy stood looking with a countenance of delighted intelligence at the great boulder, which was now to her a representative and witness of natural processes she had had no knowledge of before. The mosses, the brakes, the lichen, had all gained new beauty and interest in her eyes.
With all thy present loveliness smooth paths cut round thy rocky banks, covered with trailing vines and bright, soft mosses, nature's beautiful tapestry; flights of steps, half hidden with gay foliage, displaying at almost every turn majestic scenery; bridges thrown over the bounding, foaming rapids, from island to island, opening bower after bower with surprises of beauty at every step.
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