OVER THE GREAT CHAIN 237 



The Tatar and the Russian are dissimilar beings, 

 scratched or unscratched. 



Before noon we were in our jolting shay again 

 careering along the remarkable road, a sort of Cau- 

 casian Canadian - Pacific adapted for wheel traJEhc. 

 Often the well-metalled track was cut into the very 

 face of the gaunt cliff, whose cloven sides curved high 

 above our heads and fell to unfathomable depths 

 below. Here and there the road was roofed in for 

 snow-slides. 



Eight or ten miles below Kasbek the peaks converge, 

 as though guarding some treasure, on the historical 

 Darial Pass, a pass which is not really a pass at all, 

 but a well-defined gorge. This savage defile, with its 

 solemnity of silence, broken only by the wild music of 

 the torrent, has been described so often that I must 

 not add my quota to the numerous word-pictures we 

 have of it. Some writers tell us that their first sight 

 of the scene of desolation, of the great barring preci- 

 pices and riven crags, rising to 4000 feet above the 

 gorge, was a disappointment. I place the romantic 

 glen high among the wonders of the Caucasus. No 

 modern description has conveyed its awesome loneli- 

 ness, its sombre grey stillness, and chill fierce aspect. 

 Virgil, with his fortuitous " Diiris cantihus horrens 

 Caucasus," encompassed it as no one else has ever done. 



Just as Bliicher exclaimed when he first saw London, 

 " What a city to loot ! " so must the traveller rushing 

 through the Darial think, " What a place to hold ! " 

 An Horatius could achieve it against the onslaughts of 

 an army. 



