northern
part of the land of Circassia, a remote little place, where the
Muscovite was no more than a rumor from afar.

Nature herself had fashioned a strong fortress around Himri. Immense
mountain-chains enclosed it within massive walls on both sides, rising
bleak, interminable, and ever upwards into the dim distance.

In the midst of this valley of eternal shadows arose a third rocky
mass, forming--on both sides--a steep, ladder-like wall; and, after
extending far among the other mountains, terminating in a
ragged-looking, concave hill, defended by the junction of the
impetuous mountain streams, which dug a deep hollow among the
excavated rocks. Along this channel, running like a spinal cord
throughout the backbone of the mountain, extended some few thousands
of acres of luxuriant corn--a long but narrow strip.

At the head of an opening in the chain a rocky scaffolding was
visible, about one hundred feet in height, as regularly disposed as if
a number of gigantic dice had been designedly placed there one on the
top of another. By a marvellous freak of Nature, this rocky
conglomeration was provided apparently with towers, bastions, and
buttresses; so that, viewed from afar, it looked like a gigantic
fortress, and, on the very first glance at it, the thought
involuntarily occurs to one that if but four guns were planted on
those summits a few hundred men might defend themselves against an
army-corps. At the rear of the hill, moreover, where the cataracts
make any approach impossible, the flocks and herds of the defending
army could go on contentedly browsing for years together.

A foolish idea! To whom would it ever occur to attack Himri, that tiny
Circassian village with scarcely five hundred inhabitants, who have
nothing in the world but their kine, their goats, and their pretty
girls? Who would ever come against Himri with guns and an
army--against those most worthy men who all their life long have never
done anything but make cheese and tan hides, who only exercise their
valor against the devastating bands of bears, and only extirpate with
their long, far-reaching muskets the wild goats of the rocks?

They do not even build their houses on the summit of this wondrous
fortress of Nature, but among the rocks below, constructing them
prettily of regularly disposed logs, with roofs like dove-cots,
surrounding them with linden-trees and flower-gardens. And so far from
keeping a visitor at bay with cannon-shots, t