Logic dictated that if ancient people were to be found at all, it would be on a large and long-populated landmass, not in the comparative fastness of an archipelago.
This vastness of the mountains made them feel incredibly lonely, as if their own strength and fastness were dwarfed by the scale of the world around them.
In January 1655, though, the Duke of Savoy ordered them that they must go back into their fastnesses in the hills, come what may, or face the consequences.
And they will fight again and win! I tell you General Johnston cannot be dislodged! The mountain fastnesses have always been the refuge and the strong forts of invaded peoples from ancient times.
At the uprising of the great light the servants of Morgoth fled into Angband, and Fingolfin passed unopposed through the fastness of Dor Daedeloth while his foes hid beneath the earth.
A leading British ethno-biologist, wrote the Economist in 1995, thinks a megatherium, a sort of giant ground sloth which may stand as high as a giraffe ... may lurk in the fastnesses of the Amazon basin.
He told of his reason for venturing back from that fastness into which he had first been carried, lashed to a llama, beside a vast bale of gear, when he was a child.
The English have not been able to secure complete dominion over this territory, which is subjected to the influence of rajahs, whom it is almost impossible to reach in their inaccessible mountain fastnesses.