THE CARNIVAL 55 
high on a level of low-growing laurel, the bushes con- 
cealed by the heavy billowing masses of bloom, you 
seem to be afloat on a sea of flowers. 
The laurel freely covers the lower as well as the 
higher mountains. It wrapsTraumfestas in a man- 
tle. Who does not know the ' * laurel path ' ' that winds 
through an otherwise impenetrable thicket? Over 
this path in the blossoming season you wade, as it 
were, through a flowery labyrinth that opens to let 
you pass and closes behind you as you follow the 
winding way. Masses of bloom lightly touch your 
cheek, or graze your shoulder, tall bushes loaded with 
blossoms close over your head — you pass under an 
arch composed of flowers. You look through an open- 
ing in the bushes that surround you, and the slope 
below you is covered with a carpet of rosy-white 
bloom. In Traumfest some of us go out to see the 
laurel as the people of Japan go out to see the cherry 
blossoms. You climb Melrose to be buried in laurel 
bloom. You ascend heights that you may look down 
upon the earth hidden under flowers. Again you 
drive along the upper edge of a ravine that runs for 
miles bank full of laurel blossoms. 
The air is pervaded by the bitter-sweet smell of 
the flowers. The ground is white where the cups 
have begun to fall — or perhaps it is red, for there 
are bushes that bloom year after year as red as a 
rose, and others that clothe themselves in a gar- 
ment of delicate pink. There are also those whose 
bloom is as white as snow, the crisp and upright 
cups scarcely pricked with the red dot that marks 
