The UPPER FIELDS of Champex early in June, with the Grand Combin in the distance.
Strictly, then, Alpine circumstance is circumstance surrounding the mountain pasturages, whether these latter be known popularly as Alpine or as sub-Alpine. To the popular mind—to-day to a great extent amongst even the Swiss themselves—Alpine heights at once suggest what Mr. E. F. Benson calls “white altitudes”; but that should not be the suggestion conveyed here. For present purposes it should be clearly understood that the term “Alpine pastures” is used in its old, embracive sense, and that sub-Alpine pastures are included and, indeed, predominate.
Of course, we may be obliged to bow occasionally to a custom that has so obliterated original meanings, or we shall risk becoming unintelligible; we may from time to time be obliged to use the word “sub-Alpine” for the lower sphere in Alpine circumstance (although, really and truly, the word should suggest circumstance removed from off the Alps—circumstance purely and simply of the plains). We shall therefore do well to accept the definition of “sub-Alpine” given by Dr. Percy Groom in the “General Introduction to Ball’s Alpine Guide,”—“the region of coniferous trees.” Yet, at the same time, it must be clearly understood that our use of the term “Alpine” embraces this sub-Alpine region.
It is absolutely necessary to start with this understanding, because, in talking here—or, for that matter, anywhere—of Alpine plants we shall be talking much of sub-Alpine plants. After all, our own gardens warrant this. Our Alpine rockeries are, in point of fact, very largely sub-Alpine with regard to the plants which find a place upon them. As laid down in the present writer’s “Alpine Flowers and Gardens,” it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw any definite line, even for the strictest of Alpine rock-gardening, between Alpines and sub-Alpines. The list would indeed be shorn and abbreviated which would exclude all subjects not found solely above the pine-limit. A ban would have to be placed upon the best of the Gentians, the two Astrantias, the Paradise and the Martagon Lily, to mention nothing of Campanulas, Pinks, Geraniums, Phyteumas, Saxifrages, Hieraciums, and a whole host of other precious and distinctive blossoms. It would never do; our rockworks would be robbed of their best and brightest. Therefore, because there is much that is Alpine in sub-Alpine vegetation (just as there is much that is sub-Alpine in Alpine vegetation) we must, at any rate for the purposes of this volume, adhere to the etymology of the word “Alpine,” and give the name without a murmur to the middle and lower mountain-fields, in precisely the same spirit in which we give the name to our mixed rockworks in England.
No need for us to travel higher than from 4,000 to 5,000 feet (and we may reasonably descend to some 3,000 or 2,500 feet). No need whatever to scramble to the high summer pastures on peak and col (6,000 to 7,000 feet), where abound “Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost”; where, around a pile of stones or signal, solitary Swallow-tail butterflies love to disport themselves; where the sturdy cowherd invokes in song his patron-saint, St. Wendelin; and where the pensive cattle browse and chew the cud for a brief and ideal spell. No need to seek, for instance, the rapid pastures around the summit of Mount Cray, or on the steep col between the Gummfluh and the Rubly, if we are at Château d’Oex; or to toil to the Col de Balme or to the “look-out” on the Arpille, if we are at the Col de la Forclaz; or to scale the Pas d’Encel or the Col de Coux, if we are at Champéry; or to clamber to the Croix de Javernaz, if we are at Les Plans; or to follow the hot way up to the Col de la Gueulaz, if we are at Finhaut; or to take train to the grazing-grounds on the summit of the Rochers de Naye, if we are at Caux or at Les Avants. We shall find all we desire—as at Randa, Zermatt, Binn, Bérisal, or Evolena—within a saunter of the hotels. Such fields as are above are, for the far greater part, used solely for grazing, and we must stay where most are reserved for hay. Here we shall find the particular flora we require, and shall be able to study it without let or hindrance from “the tooth of the goat” and cow. The only hindrance will be when those strict utilitarians, the haymakers, appear and change our colour-full Eden into a green and park-like domain, with here and there a neglected corner to remind us of what a rich prospect was ours—
“Till the shining scythes went far and wide
Thus, we are to remain in a region comfortably accessible to the average easy-going visitor to the Alps—the region in which so well-found a place as Lac Champex is situated.