Rose And Pale Pink Primulas Fringe The Margin Of The
Snow, The Dainty Pedicularis Tubiflora Covers Moist Spots With Its
Mantle of gold; great yellow and white, and small purple and white
anemones, pink and white dianthus, a very large
Myosotis, bringing
the intense blue of heaven down to earth, purple orchids by the
water, borage staining whole tracts deep blue, martagon lilies, pale
green lilies veined and spotted with brown, yellow, orange, and
purple vetches, painter's brush, dwarf dandelions, white clover,
filling the air with fragrance, pink and cream asters,
chrysanthemums, lychnis, irises, gentian, artemisia, and a hundred
others, form the undergrowth of millions of tall Umbelliferae and
Compositae, many of them peach-scented and mostly yellow. The wind
is always strong, and the millions of bright corollas, drinking in
the sun-blaze which perfects all too soon their brief but passionate
existence, rippled in broad waves of colour with an almost
kaleidoscopic effect. About the eleventh march from Srinagar, at
Kargil, a change for the worse occurs, and the remaining marches to
the capital of Ladakh are over blazing gravel or surfaces of denuded
rock, the singular Caprifolia horrida, with its dark-green mass of
wavy ovate leaves on trailing stems, and its fair, white, anemone-
like blossom, and the graceful Clematis orientalis, the only
vegetation.
Crossing a raging affluent of the Dras by a bridge which swayed and
shivered, the top of a steep hill offered a view of a great valley
with branches sloping up into the ravines of a complexity of mountain
ranges, from 18,000 to 21,000 feet in altitude, with glaciers at
times descending as low as 11,000 feet in their hollows.
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