VI 
THE CARNIVAL 
THE early flowers are only the prelude in the 
floral drama that reaches its climax when the 
mountain laurel, the flame-colored azaleas, and the 
rhododendrons come upon the scene. Their appear- 
ance converts the earth into a spectacle difficult to 
imagine, and although the outburst is so prodigious, 
there is no hurry, it is sustained, hanging suspended 
as it were in almost equal intensity for a month or 
more. It takes place in the lower mountains in 
May, in the higher ones, in June and July. 
One gets the first hint of what is coming when, 
driving up a certain mountain near Traumfest, one 
sees the snowy drifts of the dogwood through a 
veil of bright red-bud in the misty ravines; that 
mountain from whose side one looks down to where 
beyond the hills the lowlands spread, reaching like 
a summer sea to the far horizon, — the lowlands that 
wherever visible give an illusion of the sea that is 
sometimes wonderfully real, distance lending a 
misty blue to the level landscape out of which roll 
lines of hills like breakers white-crested with smoke 
or mist or "deadenings." A log cabin shaded by a 
large weeping willow rests in a hollow on the moun- 
tain. Fig trees and rose-bushes grow about it, and 
a spring of cold water gushes out of the ground. From 
