6o THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
the Cumberland Gap in its blooming season. And 
the flame-colored azaleas, as has been said, light 
their fires as far north as Southern New York, 
though they do not burn with the brilliancy and 
variety of color anywhere else as here where they 
so wonderfully set the slopes of the mountains 
ablaze. 
To the mountaineer all things are admissible that 
serve his ends, and one is horrified upon first coming 
to find him burning rhododendron and laurel wood 
because, he says, they make a hot fire good for 
cooking. Think of cutting down for such a purpose 
a rhododendron or a laurel tree with a trunk thick 
enough to be split into four sticks of wood ! Familiar- 
ity with the country, however, modifies this horror. 
When there is rhododendron enough to get lost in, 
one can afTord to burn a little now and then. 
With the passing of the azaleas, the laurel, and the 
rhododendrons, the fervor of the blooming season 
here subsides, and it is then that one being in Traum- 
fest often goes down to a certain stream over which 
a bridge unites two cornfields. At either end of this 
bridge on the edge of the water grow large azalea 
bushes different from the others. These now begin to 
put forth, not pink nor flame-colored azaleas, but 
snowy white blossoms with a strong and spicy frag- 
rance that carries one back to certain New England 
swamps where one learned to love and watch for 
these fragrant things. These are the last of the 
azaleas down below and the only white ones. But 
there is a species of white azalea up on Toxaway 
