DARIAL —DARMSTADT Darial, a widely renowned gorge in the Caucasus, through which the Terek pierces, for a distance of 8 miles, between vertical walls, the Side Range of the Caucasus. It is fortified at its northern entrance. It was known to Pliny and to Procopius, and mentioned in the Georgian annals under the names of Ral-ani, Dargani, Darialani, &c., of which the root is the Persian dar or der, meaning “ door.” The Persians and the Arabs knew it as*the Gate of the Alans. Being the only available passage across the Caucasus, it was fortified since a remote antiquity, at least in 150 B.c. In Russian poetry it has been immortalized by LermontofF. The present Russian fort, Darial, is at the northern issue of the gorge, at an altitude of 4122 ft. Darjiling, a hill station and district of British India, in the Rajshahi division of Bengal. The sanitary station is situated 367 miles by rail north of Calcutta. In 1881 it had a population of 7018, and in 1891 of 14,145. It is now the summer quarters of the Bengal Government. There are several schools of considerable size for European boys and girls, and the Government boarding-school at Kurseong can accommodate 200 boys. Three breweries I have an out-turn of 80,000 gallons. The buildings and the roads suffered severely from the earthquake of June 12, 1897. But a more terrible disaster occurred in October 1899, when a series of landslips carried away houses and broke up the hill railway. The total value of the property destroyed was returned at Rs.25,00,000. The district comprises an area of 1164 square miles. The population in 1881 was 155,645, and in 1891 was 223,314, giving an average density of 192 persons per square mile. Classified according to religion, Hindus numbered 171,171; Mahommedans, 10,011; Buddhists, 40,600; Christians, 1502, of whom 1049 were Europeans; “others,” 30. In 1901 the population was 249,232, showing an increase of 12 per cent., compared with an increase of 43 per cent, in the previous decade. The land revenue and rates were Rs.1,65,806 ; the number of police was 395; the number of boys at school in 1896-97 was 2938, being 15’9 per cent, of the male population of school-going age ; the registered death-rate in 1897 was 42T 6 per thousand. The cultivation of tea was introduced in 1856. In 1897 there were 186 gardens, with 55,822 acres under tea, employing 32,897 persons permanently and 14,108 persons temporarily, and producing nearly 12 million lb. Cinchona cultivation was introduced by the Government in 1862, and has since been taken up by private enterprise. In 1896-97 the number of plants in the Government plantations was nearly 2 Jr millions ; and the amount of dry bark produced was 318,715 tt>. Including bark bought from private plantations, the out-turn of the Government factory was 10,149 lb of sulphate of quinine, and 4075 lb of cinchona febrifuge; the gross receipts were Rs. 1,76,798, and the net profits Rs.9767. The three forest divisions of Darjiling yielded in that year a gross revenue of Rs.1,36,058. There is a coal-mine at Daling, employing 260 persons, with an output of 2000 Itons. The Darjiling Himalayan Railway of 2 feet gauge, opened in 1880, runs for 50 miles from Siliguri in the plains on the Eastern Bengal line. See G. S. Bomwetsch. A Handbook to Darjiling and its Railway. Calcutta, 1899. Darlington, a municipal and parliamentary borough (one member) and market - town of Durham, England, on the Skerne, 1 mile from its confluence with the Tees, 18 miles south of Durham city by rail. There are now, in all, seven Established churches, two Roman Catholic churches and a school chapel, and twelve Nonconformist churches or chapels. The training-school for
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schoolmistresses has been enlarged and a school for children added. Recent erections are a cattle market, a corn exchange, hospital, library, and new theatre. A technical school has been formed, the public park enlarged to an area of 44 acres, and the baths twice extended. The worsted spinning mills of Pease & Company have upwards of 18,000 spindles, and employ between 500 and 600 hands. The Pease Partners Company (Limited) employ at their collieries, ironstone mines, quarries, brickworks, &c., over 6000 workmen, and raise about 3,000,000 tons of minerals per annum. Darlington possesses important works for the manufacture of iron and steel bars, and the specialties required for engineering, bridge-building, ship-building, locomotive engine-work, railway waggon building, collieries, &c. At the Rise Carr Rolling Mills (belonging to Sir Theodore Fry & Company, Limited) about 700 men are employed, and in 1899 the output of finished iron and steel work amounted to 25,840 tons. The Darlington Forge Company (Limited), with premises of 100 acres in area, of which about 40 acres were in 1901 occupied by their rapidly extending works, employ from 1000 to 1200 men, and, besides turning out steel castings and steel and iron forgings for engineering purposes, manufacture gun work, shells, &c., for British and foreign shipyards and arsenals ; the annual output, of all descriptions, being from 10,000 to 12,000 tons, representing a value of about £250,000. Extended municipal area, 3945 acres. Population on this in 1881, 35,104 ; in 1891, 38,060; in 1901, 44,496. Parliamentary area since 1885, 3602 acres. Population on this in 1881, 34,831 ; in 1891, 38,033; in 1901, 44,496. Rateable value of municipal borough in 1900, £183,725. Darmesteter, James (1849-1894), author and antiquarian, was born of Jewish parents on 28th March 1849. He was educated at Paris, where, under the guidance of M. Michel Breal, he imbibed a love for Oriental studies, to which for a time he entirely devoted himself. In 1875 he published a thesis on the mythology of the Zendavesta, and in 1877 became university professor of Zend. He followed up his researches with his Etudes Iraniennes (1883), and ten years later published a complete translation of the Avesta, with commentary, in the Musee Guimet. An interesting episode in his life was his journey to India in 1886, undertaken for the purpose of collecting the popular songs of the Afghans, a translation of which, with a valuable essay on the Afghan language and literature, he published on his return. His impressions of English dominion in India were conveyed in Lettres sur VInde (1888). England interested him deeply; his attachment for a gifted English poetess, whom he eventually married, led him to translate the poems of Mary Robinson ; and two years after his death a collection of excellent essays on English subjects was published in English. He also wrote Le Mahdi, Origine de la Poesie Per sane, Prophetes djIsrael, and other books on topics connected with the East, and from 1883 onwards drew up the annual reports of the Societe Asiatique. He had just become connected with the Pevue de Paris, a new undertaking of great importance, when his delicate constitution succumbed to a slight attack of illness on 19th October 1894. (e. g.) Darmstadt, a town of Germany, capital of grandduchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, 21 miles by rail south-east from Mainz and 17 miles south from Erankfort-on-Main. Here are a technical high school, possessing (since 1900) power to confer the degrees of doctor of engineering (doctor of the technical sciences in Prussia), a school of agriculture, an artisans’ school, and a botanical garden. The chemist von Liebig was born in Darmstadt in 1803. Principal industries : the production of machinery, carpets, playing
