A few trees were seen above the commencement of snow; but these are very small, and entirely procumbent, being sheltered in the crevices and fissures of the rock. There are also the roots of trees to be seen at { 217} some distance above the part where any are now standing.
A little above the point where the timber disappears entirely, commences a region of astonishing beauty, and of great interest on account of its productions. The intervals of soil are sometimes extensive, and covered with a carpet of low but brilliantly-flowering alpine plants. Most of these have either matted procumbent stems, or such as, including the flower, rarely rise more than an inch in height. In many of them the flower is the most conspicuous and the largest part of the plant, and in all the colouring is astonishingly brilliant.
A deep blue is the prevailing colour among these flowers; and the pentstemon erianthera, the mountain columbine (aquilegia coerulea), and other plants common to less elevated districts, were much more intensely coloured than in ordinary situations. It cannot be doubted, that the peculiar brilliancy of colouring observed in alpine plants, inhabiting near the utmost limits of phænogamous vegetation, depends principally upon the intensity of the light transmitted from the bright and unobscured atmosphere of those regions, and increased by reflection from the immense impending masses of snow. May the deep cerulean tint of the sky have an influence in producing the corresponding colour so prevalent in the flowers of these alpine plants? At about two o'clock we found ourselves so much exhausted as to render a halt necessary. Mr. Wilson, who had accompanied us as a volunteer, had been left behind some time since, and could not now be seen in any direction. As we felt some anxiety on his account, we halted, and endeavoured to apprize him of our situation; but repeated calls, and the discharging of the rifleman's piece, produced no answer. We therefore determined to wait some time to rest, and to eat the provision we had brought, hoping, in the meantime, he would overtake us.
{ 218} We halted at a place about a mile above the edge of the timber. The stream by which we were sitting we could perceive to fall immediately from a large body of snow, which filled a deep ravine on the south-eastern side of the peak. Below us, on the right, were two or three extensive patches of snow; and ice could be seen everywhere in the crevices of the rocks.