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A railway has been planned and surveyed, and will doubtless be built, through the pass. Indeed, we understand that construction has already been begun by the Russian war department. It will not be a difficult or very expensive task, because the cañon is wide, except in a few places, and the engineering problem is nowhere nearly as difficult as many that have been encountered in other parts of Russia.

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.