i6 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
pheric effect of these fires Is lovely; a tender haze 
envelops the landscape, while the air is filled with 
that faint and exquisite fragrance of burning wood 
that one always associates with the South. The air 
is smoky, but how different these clouds of incense 
from the smoke of a city! Strong, sweet winds 
blow over the mountains, mingling the odor of grow- 
ing things with that of the burning forest. 
Such trees as fall from fire or other causes, in this 
ardent climate quickly resolve into their elements. 
If they do not burn up, they decompose, excepting 
the heartwood of mature pine trees that for years 
may lie embedded in the crumbling envelope of the 
outer wood, forming the fragrant "fat pine" of the 
South, a splinter of which kindles at the touch of 
a match. Heavy, translucent, and damp w^th resin- 
ous juices, it burns with fierce heat and fiercer 
flames, the smoke that ascends from it being heavy 
like lampblack, although it does not smell like that : 
it smells like the South. It is the same odor intensi- 
fied that steals over the earth when the sun is on the 
pine trees. For here the pine is everywhere present 
to the eye and to the sense of smell. Of all the trees 
it is the one the stranger first notices, and the first 
thing the newcomer says is, "How bright the pine 
trees look," for, instead of sharing the sombre aspect 
of pines that grow In the North, these seem full of 
sunshine. 
Perhaps the pine also owes its supremacy here as 
elsewhere to a certain atmosphere of antiquity cling- 
ing about it and unconsciously affecting the feelings 
