From a crack in the mountain’s side we poured forth! In our numbers uncountable, in our three hundred and sixty Houses, and Sixty Families, and Sixty Names we poured forth! Spears on shields, fists on chests, crash of cymbals and chime of ankle bells! Flash of light in the east and hundred-syllable thunder-roll of cannon fire!

Such is our way after any confinement. Confinement? Say torture! Torment! Any confinement is imprisonment! To rest is to hobble, to linger — to be crippled! We are movers, gypsies, rovers, fertilizers and destroyers! How many mare’s tails have we lifted during the hot seasons? How many bellies swollen underneath the moonlight? Too many! Never enough!

Only twice have we held free congress with the wide sky, only twice in our whole long history ran laughing together across the wide stream of Ocean and bounding over plain and steppe. Twice! No life for a proud race! So, then: from a crack in the mountain’s side we poured forth!