[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 Yajuj and Majuj.  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,