This is an old one posted in alt.humor.puns by Robert Payes. Thank you.

It’s said that, during the reign of Czar Nicholas II, an American visitor to the royal court was boasting about the Grand Canyon. Nicholas, not to be outdone by a mere American, retorted that Mother Russia had its own canyon, one that dwarfed the American’s puny excuse for a canyon.

“Show me!” insisted the American. Nicholas agreed, and the two undertook a trip to the site of the Russian canyon. After many days of travel, they reached the site — where Nicholas revealed that there was no Russian canyon, and he had been pulling his visitor’s leg all along.

This may be the first recorded instance of czar chasm.

Payes also said in his sig, “If James Bond worked in a pickle factory, he’d be licensed to dill.”