8o THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
tender. They are drowned in light, and assume the 
marvelous pale blue which is unlike the blue of other 
mountains. But sometimes they are lilac, and blue in 
the shadows, or they are white and blue. They some- 
times look white through the trees, a pure gleaming 
white with intense blue spaces, though there is no 
snow on them, only a shimmering light as though 
they were giving back the sunshine absorbed by 
them through the long summer. It is in the winter 
months that one gets that glow on the mountains, so 
tempting and so illusive to the painter's brush, when 
towards night you often see the southern slopes 
tinged with the pink of the wild rose, again warm 
lilac or deep red, while the sky and the earth that 
inclose them are sympathetic shades of blue and 
gray. It is nearing Christmas and Christmas berries 
are blazing in the thickets. Down the Pacolet Valley 
rustling canebrakes are green and gold, while golden 
sedge-grass spreads over slope after slope, its silky 
white plumes trembling in the breeze. 
In our drives about the country we soon discover 
why the people dread the winter. It does not take 
very cold weather to make one shiver over an open 
fire, when the house walls are open to every breeze 
that blows and one's clothes are not winter-proof. 
One never sees a winter wood-pile in this country, 
and as to "filling the cellar," with the ant-like thrift 
of the New Englander, it is undreamed of. There 
are no cellars, neither the quality of the land nor the 
climate lending itself favorably to cellars: one rea- 
son, perhaps, for dreading the winter. Corn-pone, 
