It is true that _Gabri_ now stands for _fire-worshippers_, but that is only because that they assumed to themselves this title, which belonged to another order of their ancestors. The word is derived from _gabh_, “a smith,” and _ir_, “sacred,” meaning the _sacred smiths_; and _Cabiri_ being only a perversion of it is, of course, in substance, of the very same import. Mount _Caucasus_,[409] also, which still, in our language, retains its original pronunciation, of _Gaba-casan_, or the Smith’s Path, was named from the same root; nor is the tradition of the _reason_ altogether obliterated from those who dwell beside it, if we may judge from a ceremony described by a recent traveller, as performed by them, as follows:-- “The original founders of the Tartarian Mongolian Scythians, called Cajan and Docos, got embarrassed amongst those mountains, then uninhabited. After a sojourn there of 450 years, having become so numerous as to require other settlements, they were at a loss to find a passage through the mountains, when a _smith_, pointing out to them a place very rich in iron ore, advised them to make great fires there, by which means the ore melted, and a broad passage was opened for them. In commemoration of which famous march, the Mongols to this day celebrate an annual feast, and observe the ceremony of heating a piece of iron red hot, on which the Ceann (that is, the chief) strikes one blow with a hammer, and all the persons of quality do the same after him.” I shall close this chapter by the description given of the destruction of Cambyses’s army in the Nubian desert, _after the insults offered by him to the Cabiri priests_. “Gnomes, o’er the waste, you led your myriad powers, Climb’d on the whirls, and aim’d the flinty showers; Onward resistless rolls the infuriate surge, Clouds follow clouds, and mountains mountains urge; Wave over wave the driving desert swims, Burst o’er their heads, inhumes their struggling limbs; Man mounts on man, on camels camels rush, Hosts march o’er hosts, and nations nations crush: Wheeling in air, the winged islands fall-- And one great sandy ocean covers all.”[410] CHAPTER XXV. On the east side of the river Shannon, about ten miles distant from Athlone, in the barony of Garrycastle, and King’s County, is situated the _Sanctuary_ of Clonmacnoise. Within the narrow limits of two Irish acres, are here condensed more _religious_ ruins, of antiquarian value, than are to be found, perhaps, in a similar space in any other quarter of the habitable world.