THE SAPPHIRE COUNTRY 265 
lie higher and you wake up shivering to discover 
that these mists are beautiful only when wrapping 
up your friends below. 
One remembers with pleasure the sweet things 
that grow on Toxaway Mountain, fragrant white 
azaleas, tall, orange-red lilies, saxifrages, columbines, 
laurel, everything in its season, the flame-colored 
azaleas converting it into a blazing garden in their 
blooming time, while sweet-fern, suddenly discovered 
growing at your feet, sends your thought in a flash 
back to those New England pastures forever fra- 
grant in memory with the sweet-fern that clothes 
them. 
You will not be in the Sapphire Country long, 
nor anywhere in the higher mountains for that mat- 
ter, without hearing the magic word "corundum." 
Upon investigation corundum proves to be, on the 
surface, a useful but prosaic mineral which, because 
of its extreme hardness — it is next to the diamond 
in that — is made into emery wheels, sandpaper, and 
other abrasive instruments. But this is only one 
side of corundum. When you penetrate into its his- 
tory you find it the product of very old rocks, the 
oldest rocks on earth — which is interesting, but 
not vital to anybody but the geologist. But, and here 
corundum becomes not only of absorbing interest 
but positively dazzling, mysteriously connected with 
it, born from it like fancies from a poet's brain, are 
the most beautiful and precious gems in the world, 
gems surpassed in value by the diamond alone. 
When corundum crystalizes in an ecstasy of red, 
