But notwithstanding the loss of Dargo, the year preceding, "Sultan Schamyl," as the mountaineers sometimes fondly called him, had attained to such an influence that he was now at the head of the largest force which had ever been mustered in the highlands. Among the tribes of the western Caucasus, their proudest chiefs, Guz-Bey, and Dschimbulat, had never been able to raise a troop for crossing the Kuban of more than four thousand riders; Scheik Mansur, the Schamyl of the eastern Caucasus in the preceding century, and Khasi-Mollah had never taken the field with upward of eight thousand; nor had the Russians in their hostile incursions, as at Akhulgo and Dargo, assembled under their eagles a greater force than from twelve to fourteen thousand. But the Imam after all the losses of the preceding years had now under him no less than twenty thousand warriors, a large proportion of them cavalry, and waiting only his order to spring into their saddles. In the beautiful month of May, when nature in bud and full leaf throughout the mountains inspired the breast of the warrior as well as of the husbandman with hope, Schamyl set forth for the Kabardas. The week before, the highlands lay as peaceful in the midst of the spring's blossoming as they had under the protecting mantle of the winter's snows. The steed was cropping the first tender blades of grass in the vale, long unaccustomed to the bit and saddle which hung suspended against his master's wall; while the Lesghian himself was sitting listless at the door of his sakli apparently basking without a thought of war in the genial beams which shine in the time when the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. But suddenly there was a hot riding of messengers from one end of the little empire of the Imam to the other. In a week all the men of Himri, Akhulgo, and Dargo, the riders of Arrakan and Gumbet, Avaria and Koissubui, Itchkeria and Salatan, the dwellers on the four branches of the Koissu and the still blood-stained banks of the Aksai, Lesghians, Tchetchenians, and warriors of Daghestan, tribes of different origin and speaking various dialects, but freemen all, were in the stirrup, shaskas at their sides, and millet at their saddle-bows.