[Illustration: BEX: THE CROIX DE JAVERNAZ AND THE DENT DE MORCLES]
As a town Bex is somnolent; a sort of old-world slumber which is scarcely dissipated even when the hotels are at their fullest. Perhaps that mood agrees best with the eminently dream-like landscape. I know no scene in Switzerland that is more suggestive of the studied and bewitching pose of stageland than that from the slopes of Montet immediately at the back of the town. On the left the Croix de Javernaz and the Dent de Morcles, with steep woods flowing to the plain; on the right the gaunt _Cime de l’Est_ of the Dent du Midi, its base enveloped in a filmy blue haze; and just in the centre of the picture the chestnut groves on the hill of Chiètres, topped by the old Tour de Duin cleanly defined against the opening in the cliffs at St. Maurice—an opening cut as if on purpose to disclose the snows and ice of the Aiguille du Tour and the glaciers of Trient and Des Grands. Seen in spring, when cherry blossom powders the woods, or when the apple trees are rosy-white and the fields all starred with flowers; seen in autumn, when the year’s last burst of life fires the beech and cherry and burnishes the larch and chestnut; seen at sunset, when the whole broad foreground is in cool-grey shadow and the sun’s red glow rests only on the glaciers beyond St. Maurice; seen at such moments as these this landscape is truly one of fairyland, one of which one can never tire, and which surely will bring to Bex an ever-increasing popularity. At present this easy-going little town (except when the _foehn_[8] sets its châlets ablaze—as has happened three times recently—or when its river, the Avançon, rising in vernal wrath, throws down the bridges and floods the streets!) is mostly renowned for its salt mines and baths. These salt mines are in the abrupt cliffs beyond Bévieux, and are said to have been discovered by a goat, which was noticed to be licking the rocks with most persistent relish. As goats are notoriously fond of salt, this tale may be quite true. To those who do not mind a rather damp scramble within the bowels of the cliff, these mines are well worth a visit.
But Bex is also renowned for its wild flowers. It was whilst director of the salt mines that Haller wrote his _Histoire des Plantes de la Suisse_. Milton could have been no keen observer of such things if he saw only fields of daisies! The hepatica (red, white, but mostly blue) in the woods about Bévieux are simply marvellous, relieved as they are by the carpet of dead beech leaves and by innumerable clumps of primroses, blue, white, and lilac violets, rich crimson and peacock-blue vernal vetch, yellow-and-white boxleaved polygala, and the lovely profusion of white and blush-tinted wood anemones. There are fields, too, of Star of Bethlehem on the plain towards the Rhone, where also the rare yellow tulip may be found. The brilliant-orange _Lilium croceum_ and the curious and very local Snake’s-head Lily are to be found in the neighbourhood, but I had better not say where. The gorge of the River Gryonne, at the back of the hill of Montet, is crowded in early spring with the beautiful Snowflake. _Astrantia major_ and _Trollius europæus_ (the Globe Flower) luxuriate together by the hill of Chiètres. But perhaps the hill of Montet is the paradise _par excellence_ of the botanist and flower lover. Here are orchids in abundance and variety—the Frog, Fly, Bee, Spider, and the yellowish-white Helleborine among others; _Gentiana verna_ carpets the short turf with heavenly blue; the tall yellow gentian is on the open summit; _Erica carnea_ grows on the steep hillside beyond the forest, and the shady woods that descend upon Bévieux are simply packed with Lily-of-the-Valley; the gem of this hill, however, is the mass of bright-blue Lithospermum, in colour almost rivalling the vernal gentian; why its Latin Christian name should be _purpurea_ I really cannot tell.
