Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/105

Rh says, "Nowhere in the Arctic Regions have I seen such wonderful masses of colour; one may wade through acres of blossoming plants a foot high, veritable Arctic flower-gardens My words fail, I know, to give any adequate description of the immense charm attaching to this Arctic flora" ("Visits to Barents and Kara Seas, with Rambles in Novaya Zemlya, 1895 and 1897," by Colonel H. W. Feilden, Geog. Journal, April 1898). Again, Conway says, "A veritable Arctic garden surrounded the tents, for the ground was gay with blossom. There were large patches of Saxifraga oppositifolia scattered about like crimson rugs. Dryas octopetala and the Arctic poppy were as common as buttercups and daisies in a meadow. Yellow potentillas (P. verna and multifida) added their welcome note of bright colour. The Alpine Cerastium was the gracefullest blossom of the company. Then there were two Drabas, a Silene, Melandryum apetalum, Oxyria reniformis, and a number of other plants not yet in flower, besides the mosses. It was strange to meet again in this remote region so many plants that I had found by the glaciers and amongst the crags of the Karakoram-Himalaya. Papaver nudicaule, Saxifraga oppositifolia and Saxifraga Hirculus climb to a height of 17,000 feet and more on the sides of the greatest giants of that