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They are a Mediterranean species, or rather three species, left behind upon these extreme south-western coasts, probably at the vanishing of that warmer ancient epoch, which clothed the Lizard Point with the Cornish heath, and the Killarney mountains with Spanish saxifrages, and other relics of a flora whose home is now the Iberian peninsula and the sunny cliffs of the Riviera.
It was very satisfying in a case of emergency to have with us some one so old and staid and full of authority as my father, who set the example to us lads of hurrying close up to the cliff right at the head where the caverns ran in, and the rain-like water streamed down from the ferns and saxifrages to form a veil that now looked golden in the glow from the west.
The doctor profited by the forced sojourn to go over Beechey Island; he gathered some plants, which the temperature, relatively high, allowed to grow here and there on the rocks that the snow had left, some heaths, a few lichens, a sort of yellow ranunculus, a sort of plant something like sorrel, with wider leaves and more veins, and some pretty vigorous saxifrages.
This floweriness is maintained with delightful variety all the way up through rocks and bushes to the snow violets, lilies, gilias, oenotheras, wallflowers, ivesias, saxifrages, smilax, and miles of blooming bushes, chiefly azalea, honeysuckle, brier rose, buckthorn, and eriogonum, all meeting and blending in divine accord.
So saying, he gave her the hybrid plant his falcon eye had seen amid the tufts of gentian acaulis and saxifrages, a marvel, brought to bloom by the breath of angels.
Lovely as these larger flowers of the higher Alps are, they are excelled in fascination by the delicate blue flowers of the Soldanellas, like little fringed foolscaps, by the brilliant little red and purple Alpine snap-dragon, and by the cushion-forming growths of saxifrages and other minute plants which encrust the rocks and bear, closely set in their compact, green, velvet-like foliage, tiny flowers as brilliant as gems.
On my arrival I found the villagers in a meadow, all squatted cross-legged in a circle, smoking their brass and iron pipes, drinking tea, and listening to a letter from the Rajah, concerning their treatment of me. Three species of Parnassia and six primroses made the turf gay, mixed with saxifrages, Androsace and Campanula.
If I could take you with me up to Scotland, take you, for instance, along the Tay, up the pass of Dunkeld, or up Strathmore towards Aberdeen, or up the Dee towards Braemar, I could show you signs, which cannot be mistaken, of the time when Scotland was, just like Spitzbergen or like Greenland now, covered in one vast sheet of snow and ice from year's end to year's end; when glaciers were ploughing out its valleys, icebergs were breaking off the icy cliffs and floating out to sea; when not a bird, perhaps, was to be seen save sea-fowl, not a plant upon the rocks but a few lichens, and Alpine saxifrages, and such like desolation and cold and lifeless everywhere.
However, it was summer then. He went back of his mother's seal-skin tent. There he could see a beautiful valley in the shadow of the cliffs. Moss and grasses thickly carpeted it. Little brooks went sparkling through it. There were flowers in bloom, poppies of gold, dandelions and buttercups, saxifrages of purple, white and yellow. "And trees were there?" asks a reader.
Above our camp the trees were few and stunted, and we quickly emerged from the forest on a rocky and grassy ridge, covered with withered Saxifrages, Umbelliferae, Parnassia, Hypericum, etc.
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