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TRADITION CONCERNING ELBORUS. 
Caucasus to which Prometheus was chained. And who, but 
Eschylus, has drawn its picture ? In his pages alone, we find 
the magnitude, sublimity, and terrors, of that 44 stony girdle of 
the world,” that quarry of the globe, whence all its other 
mountains may seem to have been chiselled; such are its won¬ 
drous abysms, its vast and caverned sides, and summits of every 
form and altitude, mingling with the clouds. There is still a 
tradition amongst the natives, who reside in the valleys of 
Elborus, that the bones of an enormous giant, exposed there by 
Divine wrath, are yet to be seen on its smaller summit. Indeed 
the story is so much a matter of firm belief with the rude tribes 
in that quarter of the Caucasus, that people are to be found 
amongst them, who will swear they have seen these huge re¬ 
mains. Marvellous as the story is, it seemed so well attested 
that, some time ago, an European general officer thought he 
might make it a ground for penetrating farther than had yet 
been attempted, into the interior of the mountains; and, accord- 
ingly, 1 was told, he set forth on this expedition, with a party 
of two hundred men and a light piece of artillery, to ascertain 
the truth of so extraordinary a tale. However, the moment 
was not yet arrived for a European eye to behold the remains 
of this dead Colossus ; for scarcely had he penetrated any dis¬ 
tance into the recesses of the mountain, when a dreadful 
avalanche rolled in fury down its side, and overwhelmed the 
whole party, excepting its leader, and two or three soldiers. 
There was now no doubt amongst the natives, that the in¬ 
tention of the expedition was to have given charitable sepul¬ 
ture to the unburied corpse, and that the accident happened 
in consequence of the vengeance of the spirits of the mountain, 
who had the mysterious relics in charge; thus to show that the 
