On The Road To FinstermÜNZ.

View From Hoch Finstermunz Towards The Engadine.

A Portion Of The Road Near FinstermÜNZ.

A Mountain Milk Cart.

One must be painfully near-sighted or indifferent not to note the flora of these Alpine valleys. It has a beauty all the more remarkable from its high altitude and the proximity of glaciers and slow-melting snow, and in the early morning all the floreated fields glitter with countless diamond points, as their prismatic sheen of dew reflects the glory of the rising sun. In the Tyrolean valley of the Inn the flowery phenomena are more familiar. The snow lies usually far away, and the broad, open meadows, basking all day in the solar rays, reveal a splendid opulence of vegetation. The grain fields - wheat, rye, oats, and barley - show frequently a vigorous growth six feet in height, such as is rarely met with, save on the alluvial plains of the United States and Canada. Nature in these high regions seems especially gracious to the husbandman, endowing him not only with the useful, but the beautiful. Thus, underneath the yellowing expanses of the heavy grain-heads, billowing in the breeze, lies still another world of growth and loveliness. The realm of Ceres flourishes six feet from the soil; but Flora, nearer earth, rules unobtrusively yet none the less triumphantly her own imperium in imperio, where countless poppies gleam in scarlet rows, and graceful cornflower tassels show a blue so pure, that only that of the gentian can be likened to it. The humbler daisy, too, is there, completing with its snow-white petals both the trio and the tricolor, while opening to heaven its heart of gold, - the miniature symbol of the sun. For what is, after all, the daisy but the Day's Eye ? Nor is the record yet complete; for tiny white and yellow pansies - the aboriginal ancestors of all the royal beauties that spread their rich, embroidered velvets in our gardens - grow also in profusion in the heaving bosom of the grain, making a gorgeous study, in themselves, of gold and yellow, and forming with their neighbors an enchanting spectacle of varied tints. Wild roses also at a greater height become a revelation to the flower-lover. Clinging perhaps to a rough group of boulders, or trooping over some old wall, or forming self-appointed hedges of delicious fragrance, they paint the mountain side with crimson patches, and smile upon the traveler from bleak and stony places, like the cheerful greeting in adversity of a faithful friend; while the beloved sweet briar, with its delicate pink cups and clean-cut, scented foliage, nestles among the lowliest, yet, despite its modesty, betrays itself by its distinctive perfume. How lavish nature is in these unlimited displays of beauty, vast areas of which the soft-eyed cattle and the sad-eyed peasantry alone behold! I have seen miles of mountain meadows covered with the rosy foam of flowers resembling our crocuses in all save color, and growing there so thickly that the short, thin grass was almost hidden by their bloom. Moreover, up to the very snow, forget-me-nots are visible, blue as the dome surmounting them, like tiny pools of limpid water mirroring the sky, and many unknown species with new forms and colors arabesque the uplands, on whose shelving slopes cattle and flocks of sheep find forage and precarious foothold.

After A Shower.

Poppies And Cornflowers.

The Realm Of Flora.