you can follow it over the successive ridges … and through several villages chiefly occupied by the Tartar hill-people. The wall … makes many windings, and every ¾ verst it exhibits substantial towers like those of the city-wall, crested with loop-holes. Some of these are still in tolerably good condition; others have fallen, and with the wall itself have left but slight vestiges.'
"Eichwald altogether followed it up about 18 versts (12 miles) not venturing to proceed further. In later days this cannot have been difficult, but my kind correspondent had not been able to lay his hand on information.
[Illustration: View of Derbend
"Alexandre ne poit paser quand il vost aler au Ponent … car de l'un les est la mer, et de l'autre est gran montagne que ne se poent cavaucher. La vre est mout estroit entre la montagne et la mer."]
"A letter from Mr. Eugene Schuyler communicates some notes regarding inscriptions that have been found at and near Derbend, embracing Cufic of A.D. 465, Pehlvi, and even Cuneiform. Alluding to the fact that the other Iron-gate, south of Shahrsabz, was called also Kalugah, or Kohlugah he adds: 'I don't know what that means, nor do I know if the Russian Kaluga, south-west of Moscow, has anything to do with it, but I am told there is a Russian popular song, of which two lines run:
'"Ah Derbend, Derbend Kaluga,
Derbend my little Treasure!"'
"I may observe that I have seen it lately pointed out that Koluga is a Mongol word signifying a barrier; and I see that Timkowski (I. 288) gives the same explanation of Kalgan, the name applied by Mongols and Russians to the gate in the Great Wall, called Chang-kia-Kau by the Chinese, leading to Kiakhta."
The story alluded to by Polo is found in the mediaeval romances of Alexander, and in the Pseudo-Callisthenes on which they are founded. The hero chases a number of impure cannibal nations within a mountain barrier, and prays that they may be shut up therein. The mountains draw together within a few cubits, and Alexander then builds up the gorge and closes it with gates of brass or iron. There were in all twenty-two nations with their kings, and the names of the nations were Goth, Magoth, Anugi, Eges, Exenach, etc. Godfrey of Viterbo speaks of them in his rhyming verses:—
"Finibus Indorum species fuit una virorum;
Goth erat atque Magoth dictum cognomen eorum
* * * * *
Narrat Esias, Isidorus et Apocalypsis,
Tangit et in titulis Magna Sibylla suis.
Patribus ipsorum tumulus fuit venter eorum," etc.
Among the questions that the Jews are said to have put, in order to test Mahommed's prophetic character, was one series: "Who are Gog and Magog? Where do they dwell? What sort of rampart did Zu'lkarnain build between them and men?" And in the Koran we find (ch. xviii. The Cavern): "They will question thee, O Mahommed, regarding Zu'lkarnain. Reply: I will tell you his history"—and then follows the story of the erection of the Rampart of Yájúj and Májúj. In ch. xxi. again there is an allusion to their expected issue at the latter day. This last expectation was one of very old date. Thus the Cosmography of Aethicus, a work long believed (though erroneously) to have been abridged by St. Jerome, and therefore to be as old at least as the 4th century, says that the Turks of the race of Gog and Magog, a polluted nation, eating human flesh and feeding on all abominations, never washing, and never using wine, salt, nor wheat, shall come forth in the Day of Antichrist from where they lie shut up behind the Caspian Gates, and make horrid devastation. No wonder that the irruption of the Tartars into Europe, heard of at first with almost as much astonishment as such an event would produce now, was connected with this prophetic legend![1] The Emperor Frederic II., writing to Henry III. of England, says of the Tartars: "'Tis said they are descended from the Ten Tribes who abandoned the Law of Moses, and worshipped the Golden Calf. They are the people whom Alexander Magnus shut up in the Caspian Mountains."
[See the chapter Gog et Magog dans le roman en alexandrins, in Paul Meyer's Alexandre le Grand dans la Littérature française. Paris, 1886, II. pp. 386–389.—H. C.]:
"Gos et Margos i vienent de la tiere des Turs
Et. cccc. m. hommes amenerent u plus,
Il en jurent la mer dont sire est Neptunus
Et le porte d'infier que garde Cerberus
Que l'orguel d'Alixandre torneront a reüs
Por çou les enclot puis es estres desus.
Dusc' al tans Antecrist n'en istera mais nus."
According to some chroniclers, the Emperor Heraclius had already let loose the Shut-up Nations to aid him against the Persians, but it brought him no good, for he was beaten in spite of their aid, and died of grief.
The theory that the Tartars were Gog and Magog led to the Rampart of Alexander being confounded with the Wall of China (see infra, Bk. I. ch. lix.), or being relegated to the extreme N.E. of Asia, as we find it in the Carta Catalana.
These legends are referred to by Rabbi Benjamin, Hayton, Rubruquis, Ricold, Matthew Paris, and many more. Josephus indeed speaks of the Pass which Alexander fortified with gates of steel. But his saying that the King of Hyrcania was Lord of this Pass points to the Hyrcanian Gates of Northern Persia, or perhaps to the Wall of Gomushtapah, described by Vámbéry.
Ricold of Montecroce allows two arguments to connect the Tartars with the Jews who were shut up by Alexander; one that the Tartars hated the very name of Alexander, and could not bear to hear it; the other, that their manner of writing was very like the Chaldean, meaning apparently the Syriac (anté, p. 29). But he points out that they had no resemblance to Jews, and no knowledge of the law.
Edrisi relates how the Khalif Wathek sent one Salem the Dragoman to explore the Rampart of Gog and Magog. His route lay by Tiflis, the Alan country, and that of the Bashkirds, to the far north or north-east, and back by Samarkand. But the report of what he saw is pure fable.
In 1857, Dr. Bellew seems to have found the ancient belief in the legend still held by Afghan gentlemen at Kandahar.
At Gelath in Imeretia there still exists one valve of a large iron gate, traditionally said to be the relic of a pair brought as a trophy from Derbend by David, King of Georgia, called the Restorer (1089–1130). M. Brosset, however, has shown it to be the gate of Ganja, carried off in 1139.
(Bayer in Comment. Petropol. I. 401 seqq.; Pseudo-Callisth. by Müller, p. 138; Gott. Viterb. in Pistorii Nidani Script. Germ. II. 228; Alexandriade, pp. 310–311; Pereg. IV. p. 118; Acad. des Insc. Divers Savans, II. 483; Edrisi, II. 416–420, etc.)
NOTE 4.—The box-wood of the Abkhasian forests was so abundant, and formed so important an article of Genoese trade, as to give the name of Chao de Bux (Cavo di Bussi) to the bay of Bambor, N.W. of Sukum Kala', where the traffic was carried on. (See Elie de Laprim. 243.) Abulfeda also speaks of the Forest of Box (Shará' ul-buks) on the shores of the Black Sea, from which box-wood was exported to all parts of the world; but his indication of the exact locality is confused. (Reinaud's Abulf. I. 289.)
At the present time "Boxwood abounds on the southern coast of the Caspian, and large quantities are exported from near Resht to England and Russia. It is sent up the Volga to Tsaritzin, from thence by rail to the Don, and down that river to the Black Sea, from whence it is shipped to England." (MS. Note,
