@reasoning logic,
Perhaps this might help a little rl. It is the passage in Queen Sheba's Ring where Rider Haggard describes the approach to the Abati stronghold of Mur which is virtually impregnable and also rich in the provision of basic material necessities.
Quote:Our ride from the plains up the pass that led to the high tableland of Mur was long and, in its way, wonderful enough. I doubt whether in the whole world there exists another home of men more marvellously defended by nature. Apparently the road by which we climbed was cut in the first instance, not by human hands, but by the action of primaeval floods, pouring, perhaps, from the huge lake which doubtless once covered the whole area within the circle of the mountains, although to-day it is but a moderate-sized sheet of water, about twenty miles long by ten in breadth. However this may be, the old inhabitants had worked on it, the marks of their tools may still be seen upon the rock.
For the first mile or two the road is broad and the ascent so gentle that my horse was able to gallop up it on that dreadful night when, after seeing my son’s face, accident, or rather Providence, enabled me to escape the Fung. But from the spot where the lions pulled the poor beast down, its character changes. In places it is so narrow that travellers must advance in single file between walls of rock hundreds of feet high, where the sky above looks like a blue ribbon, and even at midday the path below is plunged in gloom. At other spots the slope is so precipitous that beasts of burden can scarcely keep their foothold; indeed, we were soon obliged to transfer ourselves from the camels to horses accustomed to the rocks. At others, again, it follows the brink of a yawning precipice, an ugly place to ride or turn rectangular corners, which half-a-dozen men could hold against an army, and twice it passes through tunnels, though whether these are natural I do not know.
Besides all these obstacles to an invader there were strong gates at intervals, with towers near by where guards were stationed night and day, and fossés or dry moats in front of them which could only be crossed by means of drawbridges. So the reader will easily understand how it came about that, whatever the cowardice of the Abati, though they strove for generations, the Fung had as yet never been able to recapture the ancient stronghold, which, or so it is said, in the beginning these Abati won from them by means of an Oriental trick.
Here I should add that, although there are two other roads to the plains that by which, in order to outflank the Fung, the camels were let down when I started on my embassy to Egypt, and that to the north where the great swamps lie these are both of them equally, if not more, impassable, at any rate to an enemy attacking from below.
The general characteristics of a population in this position is described throughout. Sergeant Quick refers to them as "skunks" taking care to make an exception of Maqueda, their beautiful queen.
It struck me that Haggard is making a general point about easy living and if genetics, at the simple level at least, represents outcomes in behaviour, flying, swimming and the like, then the general state of the Abati is a derivative of such easy and safe living conditions and may be said to be a scientific result.
