THE CARNIVAL 51 
as you turn away from this your first view of the 
flame-colored azaleas in their native soil. You have 
a sense of possession and gratitude to the generosity 
that thus presents to you, not a laboriously culti- 
vated plant in a pot, or even a great bed in a coun- 
try garden, but a mountain-side of incomparable 
flowers as free as the air. 
The road up Rocky Spur at the time of the carni- 
val of flowers is a succession of pictures where 
blossoming bushes are grouped at every turn. Over 
the slopes above you and the slopes below, between 
the straight tree-trunks and the leafy boughs, 
wherever the eyes rest, glow these flames of the 
azaleas. When you reach the central ridge, the high 
knife-edge top of the mountain where you can look 
off both sides, you see not only the landscape of 
mountain and valley immersed in the soft light, those 
far blue spaces and that near mingling of green foli- 
age, but you have at your feet rolling down the 
southern slope of the mountain such a wave of bloom 
that suddenly seen makes you catch your breath. 
This is the end of the road, and leaving the carriage 
you go down the mountain-side into the sunny cham- 
bers of the forest luminous with blossoms that In- 
close and embrace you. Above your head hang clouds 
of gold, at your knee press billows of flame, all about 
you are great globe-like clusters of these incompar- 
able flowers. 
You look towards the mountains that lie to 
the south, height upon height, the near ones green 
above with intense blue shadows towards their bases, 
