386 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
ceding before it, took refuge in these mountains 
where soil and cHmate were ahke favorable to 
their sustenance. So that here has been preserved 
in a great natural botanical garden and arboretum 
some of the choicest growths of recent millenniums, 
growths which but for these friendly heights would 
have been numbered with the long list of forms of 
beauty that doubtless lived and vanished before 
man came upon the scene to witness and enjoy. 
And here to-day it is man's privilege to enhance 
the loveliness of the earth by use of the wonderful 
trees and flowers that grow spontaneously, as well 
as by the introduction of the many beautiful forms 
that recent years have made accessible to us from 
that sister continent where the people of the Celes- 
tial Empire and the Flowery Kingdom have so long 
made their part of the world enchanting with flow- 
ers, foliage, and trees; and where they have created 
a form of beauty expressing the personality of their 
race. Seeing the exquisite results obtained by them, 
one imagines our own civilization expressing itself 
with equal force and originality, and here in the 
Southern mountains, with every natural advantage 
to draw upon, evolving a form of landscape garden- 
ing sympathetic to the region, as beautiful as that of 
any nation, and free from those traditional conven- 
tions of ours, which introduced here would convert 
a possible paradise into a stupid repetition of build- 
ings and gardens that whatever may be their excuse 
in other climates and other regions, are utterly out 
of place here. 
