52 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
the more distant ones a sweet, mystical blue, and 
you know that on all those slopes far and near are 
blazing the same fires that illumine the earth 
about you. Being thus close to the flowers, you can- 
not help noticing the exquisite texture of the petals, 
their great size, the symmetry of each flower and 
of the large clusters, as well as the ornamental shape 
of the bushes with the young leaves piercing through 
the bloom here and there in green points. It is the 
texture of the flowers and their width — some of 
them are almost round — that gives them that charm- 
ingly expansive, one might say luscious, efi^ect. The 
petals are so delicate that the light seems almost to 
shine through them. These wild azaleas of the South- 
ern mountains lack the somewhat dense effect of 
the well-known cultivated plants, and when trans- 
planted to parks and gardens they lose something of 
their sumptuousness, their wonderful clearness and 
richness of coloring, and to an extent their exquisite 
texture. They lose their aspect of dainty wildness 
and become as it were citified. 
To see the perfect fire of the azaleas you must come 
to their mountains. They may be found from south- 
ern New York to Georgia, but only in the high parts 
of the Southern mountains do they attain perfection. 
Although the azaleas are so widespread as a family, 
why is it that this species with fire in its veins lives 
only here and in the Far East? The Himalaya 
Mountains, like the mountains of Carolina, have 
their slopes adorned with these tremendously glow- 
ing flowers that gave to the gardens of Europe their 
