The scenery will attract many tourists, although the Russian government cares little about that. There is nothing in Europe grander or more savage than the cañons and gorges and mountain peaks of the Dariel; they equal, if they do not surpass, the boldest forms of nature in the Alps. One cañon is 4,000 feet deep, with almost perpendicular walls, and for seventy-five miles or more the cliffs and crags on both sides rise to a height of 1,500 and 1,800 feet. From the time the cañon is entered at the north until the traveller emerges from it at the south the distance is about seventy-five miles, and there is not one mile without peculiar interest and attraction. The Terek River, which finds its source among the everlasting snows of Kazbek, dashes northward in a tawny torrent and the carriage road follows its bed. On the southern slope the river Kur, born in the glaciers of Kazbek, is followed to the city of Tiflis. For three fourths of the distance the cañon is wide enough to admit half a dozen railway tracks without trenching upon the river or having to blast a roadway out of the rocky mountain side, but in two or three of the narrower places some heavy stonework will be necessary. The scenery will remind you of the fiords of Norway more than anything you have ever seen in Switzerland or the United States, and its greatest attraction is due to the forests and underbrush, with which every mountain side is clothed up to the snow line.
Twenty-seven miles from Vladicaucasus, going south, the road suddenly turns a sharp corner around a point of rocks and the traveller finds himself face to face with Kazbek, a steep, glittering dome of snow rising 16,523 feet above the sea. There is a little village of the same name at the snow line, which is about 9,000 feet, in the most savage part of the range, and the Russian government keeps a rest house there for the shelter of those who wish to make the ascent.
According to local tradition, Prometheus was chained to a certain precipice on the slopes of Kazbek. The guides will show you the exact spot, just as visitors to the Chateau d’If in the harbour of Marseilles are shown the exact dungeon in which the hero of Alexander Dumas’s famous novel, “Monte Cristo,” was imprisoned. They forget that both were heroes of fiction, and Æschylus, in writing his tragedy, evidently did not know the geography of the Caucasus, for he describes the rock as overhanging the sea, which is more than three hundred miles distant. There are several magnificent glaciers in sight of the roadway, those of Dievdorak being among the largest in the world and altogether the most extensive in Europe. There are none in Switzerland that will compare with them.
This road was built by the Russian government for purely military purposes, in order that troops, artillery, and supplies may be hurried across into Turkey or Persia or wherever else they may be needed, and Manisson is the only other route by which the highest range in Europe can be crossed. Otherwise, it would be necessary to go as far east as the shores of the Caspian or as far west as the Black Sea.
The native costume of Georgia
Head-dress of a Georgian lady
The road is fortified from end to end. There are half a dozen garrisons stationed at different points and a stronger military defence can scarcely be imagined. A few rapid-fire guns could hold back an army of millions. Nobody has ever tried to force the pass and nobody ever will. The Russians usually allude to it as “the famous Georgian military road,” and it is better known to military students than geographers, and to strategists than to the public. The grand divide, called “Krestovaia Gora” (the Crest of the Cross), is forty-one miles from Vladicaucasus, and upon a ledge above it, at an altitude of 8,015 feet, is an obelisk surmounted by a cross attributed to Queen Tamara, who ruled Georgia in the Middle Ages: and there, it is said, when that amiable lady became tired of a lover, she would have him thrown over the precipice.
