His squire, as desired, presented him with his gun and pistols, and hastened from the room to obey his orders, while the young Khan strode angrily and haughtily to the door, where he stood, foaming with rage, till his horse was brought forth. He then mounted, without offering the customary salute at parting to his noble host, who amazed, and vexed, at his want of knightly courtesy, and at his hot, irascible temper, re-entered his house. Followed by his squire, and the retainers of his family, the enraged young noble galloped furiously along the flat terrace, till he reached the steep path on the mountain's side, down which he continued his way, and along the bottom of the valley in the direction of the sea, keeping his course towards the north, along the coast. Volume 2, Chapter IX. Among the beetling crags of the high, dark, and rugged mountains, which surround the still more gigantic and terrific Elborous, is a deep glen, more wild and fearful than the many other fissures into which the mountains have been rent by some awful convulsion of nature, forming the only accessible approach to a wide bason, round which precipitous cliffs arise on every side. Their lofty and pointed summits are insurmountable, even by the wild goat or active chamois. It appeared as if nature had formed the spot expressly to serve as a fortification for outlaws, as a dozen or twenty men could at all times defend the entrance from a host of foes. It was for this reason that the ancestors of the present occupier of the country had selected it as a spot on which to fix his abode, probably on account of his own lawless disposition, that he might sally forth from this strong hold, and commit forays on his neighbours, with a secure place to retire to with his booty, without fear of reprisal. Be that as it may, his descendants had followed constantly the same occupation; rushing down on the unguarded and unsuspecting villagers of the plains, carrying off their cattle, and seizing on themselves as slaves. The first of the present race who inhabited this wild spot, was a Khan of high rank in Tartary; one of the many who escaped with the exiled King into the mountains of the Caucasus, when driven from his throne by the Russians under the grasping Catharine. There they were hospitably and joyfully received by the brave people from whose blood they had originally sprung; great numbers, therefore, settled in Abasia, and their followers adhering to them through good and evil, they thus formed powerful tribes in their new mountain homes.