The story is, that a young peasant, who had
climbed the precipices behind Oberhausen for rock-flowrets, as the
price of some maiden's love, fell at the moment when he had secured
the flowers, and was killed. From his blood the true Alpen rose
sprang, and took its colour.
We were now passing along the summit of one of the lower spurs of the
Rothhorn range, and making for the peak of the Ralligflue, which lay
considerably below us. In descending near the line of crest, we found a
large number of very deep fissures, narrow and black, some of them
extending to a great distance across the face of the hill; sometimes
they appeared as mere holes, down which we despatched stones, sometimes
as unpleasant crevasses almost hidden by flowers and the shrubs of
rhododendron. In many of these we dimly discovered accumulated snow at
the bottom, and we observed that the Alpine roses which overhung the
snow-holes were by far the deepest coloured and most beautiful we could
find.
To reach the Ralligflue, we had to cross a smooth green lawn completely
covered with the sweet vanilla orchis (_O.
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