With a gesture of gratitude Ammalát Bek placed his hand upon his heart and forehead: he perfectly felt the truth of the Khan's words, but exhaustion for many hours had been overwhelming him. Avoiding the villages, they passed the night among the rocks, eating a handful of millet boiled in honey, without the mountaineers seldom set out on a journey. Crossing the Koi-Soú by the bridge near the Asheért, quitting its northern branch, and leaving behind them Andéh, and the country of the Boulinétzes of the Koi-Soú, and the naked chain of Salataóu. A rude path lay before them, winding among forests and cliffs terrible to body and soul; and they began to climb the last chain which separated them on the north from Khounzákh or Avár, the capital of the Khans. The forest, and then the underwood, had gradually disappeared from the naked flint of the mountain, on which cloud and tempest could hardly wander. To reach the summit, our travellers were compelled to ride alternately to the right and to the left, so precipitous was the ascent of the rocks. The experienced steed of the Khan stepped cautiously and surely from stone to stone, feeling his way with his hoofs, and when they slipped, gliding on his haunches down the declivities: while the ardent fiery horse of Ammalát, trained in the hills of Daghestán, fretted, curveted, and slipped. Deprived of his customary grooming, he could not support a two days' flight under the intense cold and burning sunshine of the mountains, travelling among sharp rocks, and nourished only by the scanty herbage of the crevices. He snorted heavily as he climbed higher and higher; the sweat streamed from his poitrel; his large nostrils were dry and parched, and foam boiled from his bit. "Allah berekét!" exclaimed Ammalát, as he reached the crest from which there opened before him a view of Avár: but at the very moment his exhausted horse fell under him; the blood spouted from his open mouth, and his last breath burst the saddle-girth.