Its apparent securities had made them insolent.

Their mountain recesses had never known the presence of this foe.

Their fruits and fields, their villages and towns, with the exception of a district that lay upon the Atlantic slopes, were generally fenced in, and admirably protected, by wild and rugged masses of rocky mountains, natural defences, impenetrable, unless through certain passes which a few determined hearts might easily make good against twenty times their number.

But the numerical force of this great aboriginal people, seemed of itself sufficiently strong to promise security to their country.

At the time of Montgomery's invasion they had no less than sixty-four towns and villages.