IN the most distant cycles of the past, long before men had begun to commit the record of their deeds to books or graven stones, in "the land of lost gods and godlike men," a sturdy, warlike tribe, one of those countless bands that were wandering over the wild, unsettled country on the north of the great sea, came to a fertile plain, inclosed between the mountains and the shore, and, finding a bare, rocky plateau rising from the midst of the plain, chose it for their abode.