Tni<: DARIEL GORGE. 441 



the river, without making any considerable ascent above 

 it. The traveller is, therefore, exempt from the teiTors of 

 profound abysses and yawning depths, which suggest 

 themselves so often to the French tourist in the Al-ps. 

 That curiously-constituted individual will, however, when 

 he comes to describe this defile, probably apply to it his 

 favourite epithet of ' horribly beautiful,' and, if a classical 

 scholar, will proceed to quote Yirgil's ' Sc5evis cautibus 

 horrens Caucasus,' a passage the Roman poet may well 

 have founded on the report of some friend who had 

 wandered as far as the even then famous ' Portaj Caucasise.' 



The unimpressionable Anglo-Saxon, now that the once 

 real danger of being picked off by a mountaineer in 

 ambush behind some neighbouring crag no longer exists, 

 will feel no other emotion than one of vague delight in 

 gazing up to the gigantic cliffs amongst which he finds 

 himself. Their bold and broken forms must arrest the 

 attention of even the most indifferent observer of nature. 

 The mere fact of the existence of a carriage-road is some 

 detraction from the impressiveness of a mountain-gorge, 

 and, partly perhaps for this reason, we felt indisposed to 

 rank the Dariel beside the ravines of the Tcherek and the 

 TJruch we had lately traversed, yet we agreed unanimously 

 that it had nothing to fear from a comparison with the finest 

 defiles of the Alps. The road deserts the line of the old 

 horse-track — a mere shelf cut in the rock on the left bank 

 of the river — and, crossing to the opposite side, winds 

 round the huge bastions of basalt-crag, which rise tier 

 upon tier to a height of at least 5,000 feet above the level 

 of the Terek. 



After passing the narrowest part of the ravine, the for- 

 tress of Dariel comes into view — a low brick building loop- 

 holed for musketry, and commanding, by means of two 

 projecting towers, the narrow pass. A flat-topped table- 



