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.
This, then, is what Voltaire, in his love of town life and society, was pleased to look upon as being buried alive in the “caverns of Bex”![9] Can we really be at a loss with Nature as she is at Bex? It would seem impossible. That Nature has shortcomings is only natural, and I think we may say, as says the inspired Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, in The Gardener:
“Infinite wealth is not yours, my patient and dusky mother dust!
The gift of gladness that you have for us is never perfect.
The toys that you make for your children are fragile.
You cannot satisfy all our hungry hopes, but should I desert you for that?”
Nature at Bex may not be perfect, but certainly in very many respects she is as perfect as she can be, and we are by no means deserting her though necessity obliges us to pass on to
LES PLANS
For Nature in most lavish mood accompanies us. No matter at what season, the two and a half hours road from Bex to Les Plans is full of beauty for the eye and mind, but if there is one season above the others when this beauty is the more bewitching it is that of spring. Oh, why—a thousand times why!—is spring in the Alps so neglected by travellers seeking charm and pleasure? Why are the Kursaals crowded in spring by those who, at Custom’s bidding, are waiting for a later, more healthy and resplendent season? Time will come when Custom in this matter will surely be sent to the rightabout, and Alpine spring will be as sought after as now is Alpine winter. It is only about twelve years ago that we who wintered on the Alps were looked upon as mere eccentrics; yet these few short years have proved that we were in truth the favoured pioneers of a season that is actually becoming prime rival to that of summer. In very faith I feel that so it shall be with spring, and that a few years hence a new and fascinating experience will have revealed itself to a hitherto indifferent world.[10]