The next morning he was up at daybreak, and long before the sun had risen above the highest peak of Caucasus, he had departed from the Lars Monastery, leaving a handsome donation in the poor-box toward the various charitable works in which the brethren were engaged, such as the rescue of travellers lost in the snow, or the burial of the many victims murdered on or near the Pass of Dariel by the bands of fierce mountain robbers and assassins, that at certain seasons infest that solitary region. Making the best of his way to the fortress of Passanaur, he there joined a party of adventurous Russian climbers who had just successfully accomplished the assent of Mount Kazbek, and in their company proceeded through the rugged Aragua valley to Tiflis, which he reached that same evening. From this dark and dismal-looking town, shadowed on all sides by barren and cavernous hills, he dispatched the manuscript of his mysteriously composed poem, together with the letter concerning it, to his friend Villiers in England,--and then, yielding to a burning sense of impatience within himself,-- impatience that would brook no delay,--he set out resolutely, and at once, on his long pilgrimage to the "land of sand and ruin and gold"--the land of terrific prophecy and stern fulfilment,--the land of mighty and mournful memories, where the slow river Euphrates clasps in its dusky yellow ring the ashes of great kingdoms fallen to rise no more.




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