CHAPTER XI.

THE NESTORIANS.

1833-1836.

The facts brought to light by Messrs. Smith and Dwight respecting the Nestorians, made it the duty of the American Board to commence a mission among them. Accordingly in January, 1833, the Rev. Justin Perkins, then a tutor in Amherst College, was appointed the first missionary to that people; and Mr. Smith, being ready to return to the Mediterranean, having published his "Researches in Armenia and Persia," it was decided that Mr. Perkins should accompany him as far as Malta. They received their official instructions together, in the chapel of the Theological Seminary at Andover, on a Sabbath evening in September, and the two brethren embarked, with their wives, on the 21st of that month. Mr. Perkins, in the interval, had been prostrated by a fever, but it was deemed safe for him to proceed, and his recovery was so rapid that he was soon able to administer to the comfort of his associates at sea.

"Your first duty among the Nestorians," said the Prudential Committee in their instructions to Mr. Perkins, "will be to cultivate an intimate acquaintance with the religious opinions and sentiments of the Nestorians. You are aware that, excepting the information collected by Messrs. Smith and Dwight, during the few days they were at Oroomiah, almost all we know concerning that sect in modern times, is derived from papal writers. The learned investigations of some of these entitle them to high honor, and may be of great use to you, in the way of furnishing topics for inquiry, but the Committee wish the information which you communicate concerning the present state of the Nestorian Church, to be the result of your own personal investigations; at least to be thus corroborated. The churches of this country ought to be accurately informed as to the number of the Nestorians, their places of residence, their doctrines, rites, morals, education, etc. Whether you will be able at present, with a due regard for personal safety, to penetrate the Koordish mountains, and visit the Nestorian Patriarch, is very doubtful. But the journey should be performed as soon as may be, lest interested and perverse men should prejudice his mind against you."

After stating that they should take pains to show the Nestorians, that they had no intention of subjecting them to any foreign ecclesiastial power; and showing that the acknowledgment of the New Testament, as the only authoritative standard of religious truth, made them stand on common ground with the people to whom they were sent; it was stated, that their main object would be to enable the Nestorian Church, through the grace of God, to exert a commanding influence in the regeneration of Asia.

"Concentrated effort," it was added, "is effective effort. There is such a thing as attempting too much. Many a missionary has attempted such great things, and so many, in a new field, that he has accomplished little, and perhaps nothing as he ought. Your surveys may extend over a great surface; but a richer and speedier harvest will crown your labors, if your cultivation is applied to a single field."

The Nestorians are a branch of the ancient Christian Church, and derive their name from Nestorius, a native of Syria and Bishop of Constantinople, who was excommunicated by the third General Council at Ephesus, in the year 431. The cause of his condemnation was probably the desire to humble the occupant of the see of Constantinople, which had begun to eclipse its sister patriarchates, rather than any real doctrinal errors. He was banished to Arabia Petræa, then to Libya, and finally died in Upper Egypt. But his cause was the cause of his countrymen, and he had influential friends in the patriarchate of Antioch, who denied the fairness of his trial and the justice of his condemnation. His case was ardently espoused by many young men from Persia in the famous school of Edessa (now Oorfa), and though these were expelled, and the school itself was destroyed in the year 489, by order of the Emperor Zeno, the banished youths carried home with them a warm sympathy for Nestorius, and various causes combined to extend it among the Persian ecclesiastics. In the year 498, the sect had so multiplied, as to have the appointment of the Archbishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, who then declared himself Patriarch of the East.

"This sect continued to flourish, though occasionally persecuted, under the Persians, the Saracens, and the Tartars. They had celebrated schools for theology and general education. For centuries they maintained missions in Tartary, China, and other eastern regions. Their churches were scattered from Syria and Cyprus to Pekin, and from the coast of Malabar and Ceylon to the borders of Siberia. Early in the eleventh century, Unkh Khan, a Tartar prince on the northern borders of China, invited Nestorian missionaries among his people, and himself became the famous Prester John. Gengis Khan and several of his sons and grandsons, who conquered China and almost all Asia and a part of Europe, were connected with Prester John by marriage. Several of them had Christian wives, and one of them at least professed himself a Christian. Under some of this dynasty, Central Asia was comparatively a civilized country; and Christian travellers passed with safety from the banks of the Euphrates to Samarcand and Pekin. Some of the Chinese emperors favored Christianity, and ordered the erection of numerous churches. Meanwhile the sword of Moslem fanaticism was advancing eastward. Bagdad fell before it, and all the country on the Euphrates; then Persia, then Cabul, and the regions of the north. The Nestorian Church being thus crushed at home, its missions languished. And finally, about the year 1400, Tamerlane, who has been called 'the greatest of conquerors,' swept like a whirlwind over the remains of Nestorian Christianity, prostrating everything in his course."1

1 Tracey's History, p. 312. See also Missionary Herald for 1838, pp. 289-298. Narses on being expelled from Edessa, opened a school at Nisibis, A. D. 490, which became celebrated. About the same time, Acacius, also from Edessa, established a school at Seleucia. It was revived in 530, and was in existence as late as 605. A school was established at Dorkena, A. D. 585. At Bagdad were two schools in 832, and two others were in its neighborhood. Schools existed at Terhana, Mahuza, Maraga, and Adiabene, in Assyria, and at Maraga, in Aderbijan. There were also schools in Elam, Persia, Korassan, and Arabia. The school at Nisibis had a three years' course of study. The studies to a great extent were theological; but to the study of the Bible, they added, in the schools generally, the study of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, dialetics, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, medicine, etc.

From Malta, Mr. and Mrs. Perkins proceeded to Constantinople, where they were cordially welcomed by Messrs. Goodell and Dwight, near the close of the year. After a sojourn of five months, awaiting the proper season for travelling, they took passage, in an English vessel, for Trebizond; and there they commenced their long land travel of seven hundred miles to Oroomiah.

Mrs. Perkins was the first American lady to visit Trebizond, and the inhabitants thronged the streets to gaze upon her as she passed through the city. On the day of their entrance into Erzroom, they crossed the Euphrates, which is there only a few rods wide, and easily forded on horseback. The city is on an elevated plain, cultivated through almost its whole extent, with numerous villages everywhere in sight.

They were now in one of the oldest cities in the world, founded, as tradition says, by a grandson of Noah, and had gone over a third of the distance to Tabriz, and the most difficult part of the journey. Here they were detained nearly a month by the incursions of Koordish robbers along the direct road to Tabriz. The Pasha having gone with his troops to drive back the marauders, Mr. Perkins resumed his journey on the 15th of July. Next day he overtook the Pasha, who assured him that he could not safely go in advance of his army. The only alternative was to return to Erzroom for several weeks, or take a circuitous route through the Russian provinces. He thought it best to choose the latter course, and the Pasha kindly furnished him with a guard of horsemen as far as the frontier. On the 22d they crossed into Georgia, and soon found themselves subjected to a most annoying quarantine of fourteen days. The laws of the empire in that province were very oppressive, particularly in their operation upon travellers. The ukase of the Emperor Alexander, favoring the introduction of foreign goods for ten years subsequent to 1822, had expired. Consequently Mr. Perkins was not allowed to take any of his baggage with him, except wearing apparel, not even medicines; he was required to send all back into Turkey. Resuming his journey on the 7th of August, Mr. Perkins passed on rapidly to the Arras, which divides Georgia from Persia. Here he was needlessly and wantonly detained six days, for his passports. The hardships resulting from such treatment, with other causes, had now brought Mrs. Perkins into a very critical state of health. As a last resort, Mr. Perkins addressed a letter to Sir John Campbell, British ambassador at Tabriz, describing their situation, and enclosing his letters of introduction to that gentleman. Scarcely had he crossed into Persia, three days after, although his distance from Tabriz was not less than a hundred miles, when he was met by a courier from the ambassador, with a letter written in the kindest terms, and the duplicate of another which he had procured from the Russian ambassador to the officials on the frontier, with a view to put an immediate stop to Mr. Perkins' detention. The kindness of the same gentleman led him to send a takhtrawan for Mrs. Perkins, together with delicacies for her comfort on the way.

A providential escape occurred during the first night after crossing the Arras. Their road led up a high mountain. As they were ascending it, the forward mule of the takhtrawan became obstinate, and suddenly ran back, forcing the one behind upon the very brink of the precipice, along which the road ran; and had not divine mercy stayed them just there, takhtrawan, bearers, and occupant would have been dashed down the precipice together.

The following day, they had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Riach, physician of the embassy, whom they had seen at Constantinople, and who had come, with a Russian travelling passport, determined to cross the frontier, if necessary, and remain with them until their liberation. The medical skill of Dr. Riach did much to aid Mrs. Perkins in completing the journey to Tabriz, where they arrived on the 23d of August, seventy-four days after their departure from Trebizond. Three days after, Mrs. Perkins became the mother of a daughter, of whose existence she was unconscious for several days. Her life was probably saved, under God, through the combined skill and kind attentions of three English physicians, who were then providentially at Tabriz. The Ambassador was exceedingly kind; so were Mr. and Mrs. Nesbit, who have been already introduced to the reader. Dr. Riach, afterwards at the head of the embassy, stayed five days and nights with Mrs. Perkins, not retiring from the house till he saw some hope of her recovery. "The treatment we received from them on our first arrival," writes the missionary nine years after, "is but a specimen of their kindness to us from that period to the present."

The field about to be occupied was of limited extent. The Nestorians numbered not more than one hundred and fifty thousand souls. Their territory extended from Lake Oroomiah three hundred miles westward to the Tigris, and two hundred miles from north to south, embracing some most rugged mountain ranges, and several very beautiful and fertile plains, the largest of which formed the district of Oroomiah. Education was then at the lowest ebb among the people, hardly a score of men being intelligent readers, while only one woman, the sister of Mar. Shimon, was able to read at all. They had no printed books, and but very few manuscripts of even portions of the Bible, and these were in the ancient Syriac, which was an unknown tongue to almost all of them. Their spoken language was an unwritten dialect of the Syriac. Still deeper was their moral degradation, almost every command of the decalogue being transgressed without compunction, or even shame when detected. Yet they were entirely accessible to the Protestant missionary, and were more Scriptural in their doctrines and ritual, with far less of bigotry, than any other Oriental sect; so much so, indeed, that the Nestorians were sometimes called the "Protestants of Asia."

Mr. Perkins wisely determined upon acquiring a knowledge of the Syriac before going to reside among them. To obtain a teacher, he visited Oroomiah in October, accompanied by the Rev. Mr. Haas, of the Basle Missionary Society, then residing at Tabriz. The manner in which he was everywhere received by the Nestorians was exceedingly encouraging, and he obtained the services of Mar Yohannan, one of their most intelligent bishops, as a teacher, who brought with him a young priest, scarcely less promising than the bishop himself.

Asahel Grant, M. D., and wife, left Trebizond for Persia September 17, 1835, accompanied by Rev. James L. Merrick, who was to commence a mission to the Mohammedans of Persia. Mr. Perkins met them at Erzroom, to assist on their journey through the inhospitable region of the Koords.

The province called Oroomiah is situated in the northwestern part of modern Persia. It is the northwestern part of ancient Media. A beautiful lake, eighty miles long and thirty broad, and four thousand feet above the level of the sea, is its boundary on the east, and a chain of snow-covered mountains bounds it on the west. The water of the lake is so salt and bituminous that fish cannot live in it, while its shores are enlivened by numerous water-fowl, of which the beautiful flamingo is most conspicuous.1 The plain contains about three hundred villages and hamlets, and is covered with fields, gardens, and vineyards, which are irrigated by streams from the mountains. The landscape is one of the most lovely in the East, and its effect is heightened by its contrast with the adjacent heights, on which not a solitary tree is to be seen. Along the water-courses are willows, poplars, and sycamores; and the peach, apricot, pear, plum, and other fruits impart to large sections the appearance of a forest. Near the centre of the plain, four hundred feet above the lake, stands the city of Oroomiah. It dates from a remote antiquity, and claims to be the birthplace of Zoroaster. It is built chiefly of unburnt brick, is surrounded by a high mud wall and a ditch, and has a population of twenty-five thousand, of whom the larger part are Mohammedans. The Nestorians of the plain were estimated at twenty thousand.

1 An analysis of the water of the lake is said to have proved it to be highly charged with sulphureted hydrogen.

Dr. Grant left Tabriz six days in advance of his associates, to prepare for their coming. But so tardy had been the carpenters, that Mr. Perkins and the ladies found things in a very sorry condition. It was late in November, and after facing a driving rain all day, they had to content themselves with unfinished and unfurnished rooms; and as the muleteers did not arrive with their baggage, they had neither bedding, nor a change of clothing. But they had a blazing fire, and provisions from the market, with a sharpened appetite, and slept comfortably on piles of shavings, covered with the clothes they had dried by the fire.

Dr. Grant awakened great interest as a physician. He was continually thronged with patients sick with all manner of diseases, real and imaginary. Moslems and Nestorians came together. Children brought their aged parents, and mothers their little ones. Those blinded by ophthalmia were led by the hand. Those relieved from suffering were ready to kiss his feet, or even his shoes at the door. But it was a laborious and trying position. A thousand silly questions must be answered. Nor was there any certainty that the prescriptions would be followed, even if understood; and every Nestorian, though suffering under the most alarming disease, would sooner die than touch a spoonful of chicken-broth during a fast. Dr. Grant gained great repute by the removal of cataracts, and the consequent restoration of sight. There were patients from great distances. Nestorians came from the mountains, Koordish chiefs from the regions beyond, and some from the distant borders of Georgia. Among the multitudes, were the governor of the province, two princes of the royal family, and many of the Persian nobles. His services were gratuitous, he made no show to attract customers, and being ready to aid the native physicians with both medicine and instruction he gave them no offense.

Dr. Grant possessed a rare fitness for the position. I have a vivid recollection of him at the time of the annual meeting of the Board at Utica in 1834, when he presented himself, one stormy evening, to offer his services as a physician for the mission to the Nestorians. What specially impressed me was his commanding form and mien, joined with calm decision and courage, qualities eminently fitting him for a life in Koordistan. The impressions made by that brief personal interview, were sustained and strengthened through a most intimate correspondence till his death.

It is in the early stage of a mission, that the value of a pious physician is most apparent. With the exaggerated conceptions usually entertained of the temporal blessings he is able to confer, he is welcomed by all classes from the first. Every door is opened, every man and woman is accessible. The good-will thus awakened is more or less shared by his fellow missionaries, and is thus likely to be all the sooner confirmed by a spiritual appreciation of the Gospel.

Soon after their arrival, the missionaries were invited to attend a wedding at Geog-tapa, a large Nestorian village five miles distant. As they approached, a multitude came out to meet them, with trumpets and drums, and shouts of "welcome, welcome." The pupils of an English school, which priest Abraham had opened, saluted them with "good morning." They found a fat buffalo just knocked down before the bridegroom's house, and the bride was standing, like a veiled statue, in the farther corner of a large room, which was soon filled by the rushing multitude. It was customary to have the marriage ceremony in the church, commencing at least an hour before day because of its length, and because all parties, even the officiating priests, were obliged to fast till it was over; but out of regard to the strangers, it was deferred till their arrival, and was in the dwelling of the bridegroom's family. Priest Abraham officiated, assisted by two other priests and by several deacons, in reading the prayers and Scripture selections, all in the ancient Syriac. After an hour's reading, the time came for joining hands. Several women caught hold of the veiled bride, and pulled her by main force half across the room toward her intended husband. Several men at the same time seized the bridegroom, who, after a modest resistance, yielded and advanced towards the bride. He was not able to secure her hand, however, without a struggle, but at length succeeded; and then both took a submissive stand near the officiating clergy. After reading another hour or more, the bishops, priests, and missionaries, with the multitude, advanced and kissed the married pair.

Mr. Perkins engaged Mar Gabriel, a bishop, fair in form, but of a restless spirit, to reside with him as his teacher in Syriac; and the year did not close before this indefatigable missionary commenced reducing the modern Syriac to writing, with the aid of priest Abraham, who wrote a beautiful hand. His first translation was the Lord's Prayer. The Nestorians were much interested, having never heard reading in their spoken language. Even the sober priest could not refrain from immoderate laughter, as he repeated line after line of his own writing.

What soon became a seminary for males was commenced on the 18th of January, 1836, with seven boys from the city, and the number was soon increased to fifty by accessions from the surrounding region, among whom were three deacons and one priest. Manuscript cards prepared by Mr. Perkins supplied the place of books. They read in the ancient Syriac, and the cards in the modern dialect, and in English, and also wrote with their fingers in sand-boxes, and made some progress in arithmetic. There were several free schools, but only a very small proportion of the hundred pupils were females. Several of the clergy resided with the mission, and conducted worship once on each Sabbath in their own language. At this service a portion of Scripture was read, which they had previously studied with Mr. Perkins, and its meaning was explained and enforced. It is a singular fact, that Dr. Grant was obliged to teach a Mohammedan school during a small part of each day, to quiet the Mussulmans, who were jealous of these favors to their despised Christian subjects, and resentfully inquired, "Are we to be passed by?"

Experience showed that the families had been removed to Oroomiah too soon; for it took place during cold weather, and the new mud used in repairing the walls of their chambers had not been sufficiently dried. This predisposed them to disease during the hot, malarious summer, when all were more or less affected with illness. A bilious fever brought Mr. Perkins to the borders of the grave; and while he lay thus sick, and at one time insensible, Dr. and Mrs. Grant were seized with fever and ague. Missionary labors were of course suspended. The Nestorians sympathized deeply, and rendered all the aid in their power, and Mohammedans also manifested much concern.

CHAPTER XII.

THE NESTORIANS.

1836-1840.

The two missionaries and priest Abraham narrowly escaped assassination by ruffians of a class called Lootee, while on a visit to the village of Mar Joseph. Walking quietly through the village they encountered three of these fellows, in a narrow path lined by a hedge, with a horse placed across to obstruct their progress. Priest Abraham stepped forward, and was mildly requesting them to allow his party to pass, when one raised his dagger to strike him. Seeing the defenseless priest in peril, Mr. Perkins instinctively sprang forward, and the assassin turned upon him. Nothing but his fall at the moment the weapon struck him, saved him from instant death. As it was, the dagger cut through his clothes, and punctured his side. Seeing his associates thus hard beset, Dr. Grant, who was behind, ran up and brought his riding whip with such force across the villain's eyes, as to confuse him for the moment, and in the confusion the party ran into a house and barred the doors. The priest received a cut in the head, but Mr. Perkins was not seriously wounded. Through the efforts of the British ambassador, the Lootee received so severe a chastisement from the Persian authorities, as made them careful, ever after, how they injured any member of the mission.

A printing establishment was much needed; and a press was sent with the Rev. Albert L. Holliday and Mr. William R. Stocking, who sailed from Boston in January, 1837. At Trebizond, the press was found too unwieldy to be carried overland, and was accordingly sent back to Constantinople and sold to the Armenians, for their high-school at Scutari. The new missionaries were met at Erzroom by Mr. Perkins and Mar Yohannan, and reached their destination in June. Mr. Holliday found the encouragement to labor quite as great as had been represented by the brethren first in the field.

The extreme poverty of the Nestorians had the same effect on the first missionaries, that like causes have had in some other portions of the unevangelized world. It caused the whole expense of schools and of the agency employed to be thrown upon the Christian public at home. The board of the fifty scholars in the seminary was paid by the mission, and people in the villages thought they could not afford to send their children to the village schools, unless each of them was paid two or three cents a day to buy their bread. They said their children could earn as much by weeding the cotton, or driving the oxen; and the brethren naturally rejoiced in being able to afford this aid. Among the students of the seminary at this time, were two bishops, three priests, and four deacons, who of course were adults. Pupils in the first rudiments of their own language received twelve and a half cents a week for their support, and the more advanced received twenty-five cents. Experience was as needful to discover the best methods of missionary labor, as of any other untried undertaking.

The mission now had eight native helpers, among whom were three bishops and two priests, all, except one, residing with the mission. That one was the venerable Mar Elias, the oldest bishop in the province, who superintended one of the schools. He had adopted the practice of translating portions of the Epistles, which he read statedly in his church. Some of the people were much delighted with the innovation; but others, and a profligate priest among them, complained that he annoyed them with the precepts of "Paul, Paul, Paul," of whom they had scarcely ever heard before. But the good bishop did not regard the opposition.

Mrs. Grant was the first member of the mission, called away by death. She had been thoroughly educated, and the two bishops in her family wondered to see a woman learning Syriac through the Latin language. Nor was their wonder less when she turned to the Greek for the meaning of some difficult passage in the New Testament. Finding the prejudices of the people too strong to permit her to begin a girls' school at once, she taught her own female domestics to read, and then sought to interest mothers in the education of their daughters. At length she succeeded in collecting a small school of girls, of which she was the first teacher. When too sick to leave her chamber, she had the pupils assemble there. This was the beginning of the Female Seminary, which afterwards became so noted under Miss Fiske. It was commenced March 12, 1838, with four pupils, but the number soon increased, and Mrs. Perkins rendered valuable aid. Mrs. Grant readily learned to speak the Turkish, and to read the ancient Syriac. The modern Syriac she was able both to read and write, and the French she could speak before leaving home. But, cultured and refined as she was, she declared the time spent in the mission field among that rude people, to have been the happiest part of her life. The aid she rendered her husband in his medical practice, added not a little to her usefulness. She had great aptness and skill in the sick chamber, and like her divine Master went about doing good; yet without neglecting her household affairs. Her death occurred on the 14th of January, 1839, at the age of twenty-five. She was greatly lamented by the Nestorians. The bishops said to the afflicted husband, "We will bury her in the church, where none but holy men are buried;" and her death produced a subdued and tender spirit throughout the large circle of her acquaintance. This better state of feeling continued through the year, especially in the seminary.

Priest Dunka, from one of the independent tribes, gave indications of piety. He had learned the alphabet in his childhood, while tending his father's flocks on the mountains, and became a reader without farther instruction. At Oroomiah he was now both a learner and helper. Three months of the summer he spent among his native mountains, preaching the Gospel in the villages around his home. Little of the truth had been heard there for ages, except in the unknown language of the liturgy, but the people were eager to listen.

In September, Robert Glen, son of the Rev. William Glen of Tabriz, was hopefully converted while at Oroomiah on a visit. He was born at Astrakhan, where his father labored seventeen years as a missionary, and was now employed as a teacher in a small school of Moslem young men. The mission at this time had twelve schools in as many villages, containing two hundred and seventy-two males, with twenty-two females; and seventeen pupils in the female boarding-school, and fifty-five in the seminary, which was taught by a priest and deacon, under the supervision of Mr. Stocking.

The scarcity of copies of the Holy Scriptures among the Nestorian people would be remarkable, in view of their receiving them as their rule of faith and practice, if we did not remember how sorely they had been persecuted in the past, and how much they still suffered from Moslem oppression. Excepting the Psalms, which entered largely into the prescribed form of worship, they had but one copy of the Old Testament, and that was in a number of volumes, the property of several individuals. The British and Foreign Bible Society had printed the Gospels in the Nestorian character; but they had scarcely more than a single copy of the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, and none of the Book of Revelation, in their own character. Of course all was in the ancient language.

Dr. Grant had been suffering for some time before the death of his wife, from the climate of the plain; and he was now instructed by his Committee to commence a station, if possible, among the Nestorians on the western side of the Koordish mountains. Incapable of fear, he had vainly sought the consent of his brethren to penetrate the mountains directly from the plain. It was the belief of the Committee that, with his medical skill and his courage and address, he could do this with safety; but the brethren of the mission had been so impressed by the murder of Mr. Schultz, on that route, that they could not consent; and the opinions of brethren on the ground were not to be disregarded. He was, however, authorized to enter the mountains from the west, in the belief that, once established there, he would soon find his way opened on every side.

On the first of April, 1839, Dr. Grant left Oroomiah, expecting to meet Mr. Homes at Erzroom, who had been appointed to accompany him. An unusually late fall of snow made the journey perilous. For more than two hundred miles, it was from two to four feet deep; and for twenty miles, in the mountains beyond Ararat, there was not a single human habitation. In descending, the only way he could know when he was out of the path, was by the depth to which he sank in the snow. In the pass of Dahar, near the sources of the Euphrates, where Messrs. Smith and Dwight had well-nigh perished, the guide lost the path in a snow-storm, and declared it impossible to go on. The snow was too deep for the horses. Turning back was out of the question, as their tracks were obliterated by the wind, which would then be in their faces. Though benumbed and feeble, the courage of Dr. Grant did not fail. He could not tell how deliverance would come, but had a sweet assurance that God would send it, and encouraged his companions to new effort. Just then four mountaineers came tramping over the snow before them, and one of them consenting to turn back, they passed safely on foot, the man breaking down the drifts for the horses, and exploring the path by thrusting his long staff deep into the snow. He reached Erzroom on the seventeenth, and rested with his kind friend Dr. Riach, who had retired from Teheran, because of impending war between England and Persia. Dr. Grant's health had improved amid all his hardships.

Learning that Mr. Homes was detained at Constantinople, he started for Trebizond on the eighteenth, with no attendant except the surijee from the post-house, and there took a steamer for Constantinople. Mr. Homes not being yet able to accompany him, he returned alone to Erzroom, and proceeded thence to Diarbekir, where he arrived May 30. He found the city waiting in suspense for news from the battle of Nizib, between the forces of Mohammed Ali and the Sultan. The defeat of the latter was soon manifest in the arrival of hundreds of fugitives, completely stripped by the Koords. Anarchy reigned from that moment, and the city was filled with robbery and murder. The people ascribed their defeat to Frank innovations in military tactics; and when Mr. Homes arrived, the brethren not only heard curses against themselves in the streets, but an openly expressed purpose to kill every European in the place. The thermometer was then 98 in the shade, and their danger from both climate and people induced them to leave for Mardin, which they did with an escort of thirty horsemen. Such was their personal danger even at Mardin, only a few days after their arrival, that the governor offered them a guard. This they declined, not thinking it best to manifest any alarm, and the excitement soon apparently died away. But, two months later, a mob killed the governor in his palace in open day, and also several leading men, and then sought the lodgings of the missionaries, intending to kill them. Providentially they had ridden out farther than usual that morning, in a vain search for a caravan, and before their return, the Koords had shut the gates, to prevent the entrance of government troops. That saved the lives of our brethren, who retired to the convent of the Syrian Patriarch, a few miles distant, which their enemies did not dare to attack.

In the midst of so much peril, and with so little hope of usefulness, Mr. Homes, by the advice of brethren at Constantinople and Smyrna, resolved to return, and Dr. Grant did not withhold his consent. "Within the ruined walls of an ancient church," he writes, "in a lonely ravine, overlooked by the town, I exchanged the parting embrace with my brother and companion in tribulation. On account of the anarchy around us, we had travelled together barely two days, but on a bed of sickness, and surrounded by men of blood, I had learned to prize the company of a Christian friend. Yet, while Providence called him back to Constantinople, to me it seemed to cry, 'Onward to the mountains!'"

Dr. Grant resolved to go to Mosul. Disguised in an Oriental dress, he returned to Mardin to prepare for his journey, and while there, his safety was insured by the surrender of the town to the Pasha of Mosul. On his way, he was favored with the company of Captain Conolly, the bearer of despatches for India, whose sad fate on the banks of the Oxus afterwards occasioned the journey of Dr. Wolff to Bokhara. The distance was nearly two hundred miles, and they arrived at Mosul on the 20th of September.

Fully resolved to penetrate the fastnesses of Koordistan, and trusting in the protecting power of his gracious Lord, Dr. Grant left Mosul on the 7th of October, with two Nestorians from Persia, a Koordish muleteer, and a kavass from the Pasha. Crossing the bridge of twenty-one boats, which spans the Tigris, he was amid the ruins of Nineveh, and soon reached a Yezidee village, where he was hospitably received. On the 15th, as he approached Duree, near the borders of Tiary, deep Syriac gutturals from stentorian voices in the rocks above him demanded who he was, where he was going, and what he wanted. Had he been a Papist, he would have been robbed; as it was, the frightened kavass lost all courage, and begged permission to return.

When the people heard him speak their own language, they gathered around, and welcomed him to their mountain home. His fame as a physician had preceded him, and they came for medicine from all directions. The venerable bishop, with a long white beard, took him into their ancient church, which was a cave high up on the mountain side, with heavy masonry in front, and dark within. Here the bishop slept, to be in readiness for early morning prayers, and he was pleased with the gift of a box of matches to light his lamp.

A loftier range still separated Dr. Grant from Tiary, the "munition of rocks," which he describes as "an amphitheatre of mountains broken with dark, deep defiles and narrow glens, that for ages had been the secure abodes of this branch of the Christian Church." He had been warned at Mosul, not to enter this region without an escort from the Patriarch. But he could not afford the delay, and as the bishop encouraged him, he resolved to go alone. Exchanging his Turkish boots for the bishop's sandals, made of hair, to avoid a fatal slip on the smooth, narrow ledges of the mountain, he set off early on the 18th. An hour and a half brought him to the summit. Retiring to a sequestered corner, where he could feast his eyes with the prospect, his thoughts went back to the period when the Nestorians traversed Asia, and, for more than a thousand years, preached the Gospel in Tartary, Mongolia, and China. Though the flame of vital piety was almost quenched on their altars, his faith anticipated the day when those glens would reëcho the glad praises of God; and down he sped, over cliffs and slippery ledges, to the large village of Lezan, on the banks of the noisy Zab. Scarcely had he entered it, when a young man, the only one he had ever seen from this remote region, from whose eyes he had removed a cataract a year before, came with a present of honey, and introduced him at once to the confidence of the people. He became so thronged with the sick from all the region, that he had to forbid more than three or four coming forward at once.

Leaving Lezan, he went up to Ashita, where he became the guest of a priest, reported to be the most learned of living Nestorians, who had spent twenty years in copying, in beautiful style, the few works of Nestorian literature; but even he had not an entire Bible. He was electrified by Dr. Grant's account of the press, that could do his twenty years' work in a less number of hours. At Kerme, where he arrived on the twenty-fifth, almost exhausted by a walk of ten long hours, he was soon recognized and welcomed by a Nestorian, who had received medical aid from him two years before at Oroomiah. Starting the next morning for the Patriarch's residence, he forded a river on horseback, that was fifty or sixty yards across. He was now on the caravan road from Salmas to Julamerk. In the more precipitous places, the rock had been cut away and regular steps chiseled out. He was received by the Patriarch with great cordiality, without the extravagant compliments so common with the Persians. "And now," said the Patriarch, "you will make my house your own, and regard me as your older brother." Mar Shimon was thirty-eight years old, above the middle stature, well-proportioned, with a pleasant, expressive, and rather intelligent countenance; and his large flowing robes, his Koordish turban, and his long gray beard, gave him a patriarchal and venerable appearance, that was heightened by a uniformly dignified demeanor. But for the fire in his eye and his activity, he would have been thought nearer fifty than thirty-eight. Being the temporal as well as spiritual head of his people, the difficulties of his situation were assigned as the cause of his hoary hair and beard.

During the five weeks spent in the patriarchal mansion, Dr. Grant had an opportunity to see Nestorians of intelligence and influence from all parts of the mountains, and elicited from them information such as he could not have gained in any other way. At parting, the Patriarch presented him one of the ancient manuscripts of his library. It was the New Testament, written on parchment, in the old Estrangelo character, seven hundred and forty years before. It was presented by Dr. Grant to the library of the American Board, and is now there.

His next sojourn was in the castle of Nûrûllah Bey, chief of the independent Hakary Koords, two days from the residence of the Patriarch. The Bey was very sick; and becoming impatient under the slow operation of the medicine given him by the doctor, he sent a messenger for him at midnight. "The sentinels upon the ramparts," says Dr. Grant, "were sounding the watch-cry in the rough tones of their native Koordish. We entered the outer court through wide, iron-cased folding-doors. A second iron door opened into a long dark alley, which conducted to the room where the chief was lying. It was evident that he was becoming impatient; and as I looked upon the swords, pistols, guns, spears, and daggers—the ordinary furniture of a Koordish castle—which hung around the walls of the room, I could not but think of the fate of the unfortunate Schultz, who had fallen, as it is said, by the orders of this sanguinary chief. He had the power of life and death in his hands. I knew I was entirely at his mercy; but I felt that I was under the guardian care of One, who had the hearts of kings in His keeping."

The chieftain recovered, and, in token of his gratitude, made his benefactor the present of a horse. Dr. Grant describes him as a man of noble bearing, fine open countenance, and about thirty years of age. This important journey was completed on the 7th of December, 1839.

The Rev. Willard Jones and wife arrived in the month previous; and the Rev. Austin H. Wright, M. D., and wife, in the following July, to take Dr. Grant's place as missionary physician; and Mr. Edward Breath, a printer, in November. A press, made for the mission, to be taken to pieces and so rendered portable, came with the printer, much to the satisfaction of the people. A font of Syro-Chaldaic type had previously been received from London, through the kindness of the Rev. Joseph Jowett, editorial superintendent of the British and Foreign Bible Society's publications. The press was the more seasonable, because the Jesuits had commenced their characteristic and determined efforts to get possession of the field. The vain young bishop, Mar Gabriel, imagining himself to have been slighted by his clerical brethren, and being strongly assailed with flatteries and offers of money, had, in an evil hour, encouraged them to come among his people. On reflection he repented of his rashness, called in the aid of his Protestant friends, and wrote to Boré, the French Jesuit, warning him to keep aloof from his people. Boré was enraged, and replied that, having a firman from the King of Persia permitting him to open schools, he should open one at Ardishai. But Gabriel and the mission had already opened a school under one of the best teachers from the Seminary, and soon opened another,—the two containing sixty scholars; while the Jesuit's school, commencing with nine scholars, dwindled to four or five. One of the first works of the press was to print a tract in the Syriac language, entitled "Twenty-two Plain Reasons for not being a Roman Catholic." The Nestorians were exceedingly interested by the array of Scripture texts against the corrupt doctrines and practices of that sect. This was followed by a thousand copies of the Psalms.

The gradual revival of preaching in this ancient Church, became now apparent. At the earnest request of the people, a circuit was formed of seven preaching stations, at all of which the missionaries were aided by ecclesiastics, three of them bishops.

Thus, with the hearty approval of both bishops and priests, the missionaries began to preach in the churches, and so great was the demand for preaching that Mr. Stocking was ordained. The ordination took place in one of the Nestorian churches. Mr. Perkins felt that spiritual death, rather than theological error, was the calamity of the Nestorians. Their liturgy was composed, in general, of unexceptionable and excellent matter, and the charge of heresy on the subject of Christ's character, he pronounces unjust. The Nicene Creed, which they always repeat at the close of their worship, accords very nearly with that venerable document, as it has been handed down to us.1

1 Annual Report of the Board for 1841, p. 114.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE MOUNTAIN NESTORIANS.

1840-1844.

We paused in the history of the Nestorian mission at the return of Dr. Grant to Oroomiah, after a successful exploration of the mountains of Koordistan. He remained there till the 7th of May, 1840. During this time, two brothers of the Patriarch visited the mission, and urged its extension into the mountains. Mar Shimon also wrote, renewing his request for a visit in the spring. Dr. Grant had but little prospect of recovering his health on the plain; and the welfare of his two sons in the United States, children of his first marriage, and the three children then with him at Oroomiah, seemed to require that he revisit his native land. Two of these last mentioned sickened and died in January. Having then only one son to take with him, four years of age, he decided to return through the mountains, and revisit the Patriarch on his way. It was a perilous journey so early in the season, especially with so tender a companion; but the brave little fellow appears to have endured the snows and precipices of Koordistan as well as the father. The boy was everywhere a favorite, both with Koords and Nestorians. One night the snow was so deep near the summit of a mountain that they were obliged to sleep under the open sky, with the thermometer below zero; but the Patriarch's brothers had carpets enough to keep them warm until three in the morning, when the light of the moon enabled them to resume their journey. Mar Shimon was then a guest of Suleiman Bey, in the castle of Julamerk, and with him they spent ten days. Nûrûllah Bey had gone to Erzroom to negotiate for the subjugation of the Independent Nestorians to the Turkish rule, having already relinquished his own personal independence, and become a Pasha of the empire. Suleiman Bey was a relative of the Emir, and had been the leader of the party that murdered Mr. Schultz. He showed special kindness to Dr. Grant. His mother and sister, as also the sister and mother of the Patriarch, with womanly forethought, loaded the Doctor with supplies for the inhospitable road before them. He found the Emir at Van on his return home, and discovered what had been the object of his journey to Erzroom. When Dr. Grant arrived there, with clothes worn and ragged from the roughness of the journey, he had the happiness of meeting Dr. Wright, then on his way to Oroomiah. The two brethren called on the gentlemen of the Persian embassy, then at Erzroom, and one of them, observing Dr. Grant's erect and commanding person, remarked that a good soldier was spoiled when that man became a missionary. At Trebizond he gladly exchanged the saddle for the quiet of the steamer, which took him to Constantinople, and he arrived at Boston on the 3d of October.

Having embraced the theory, that the Nestorians are descendants of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, Dr. Grant, with characteristic industry, employed such time as he could command during his missionary travels and his homeward voyage, in preparing a volume in support of these views. It was published both in this country and in England, and attracted considerable attention. The celebrated Dr. Edward Robinson deemed it deserving of an elaborate discussion in the "American Biblical Repository," in which he makes a strong argument against the theory.1

1 See American Biblical Repository, 1841, vol. vi. of new series, pp. 454-482, and vol. vii. pp. 26-68.

In January, 1841, Dr. Grant had the pleasure of witnessing the departure of the Rev. Messrs. Abel K. Hinsdale and Colby C. Mitchell, and their wives, for the Mountain Nestorians. They went by way of Aleppo and Mosul, that being the more practicable route for females; but the Doctor, thinking to reach the mountains before them, and prepare for their arrival, went himself by way of Constantinople, Erzroom, and Van. He was at Constantinople May 14th, and at Van on the first day of July. The journey from Erzroom to that place was wearisome and perilous, famine, the plague, and predatory Koords harassing him nearly all the way.

Van, with fourteen thousand Armenian population, though at that time difficult of access, was even then regarded as an important place for a missionary station, and preferable for residence to most others in the interior. Being five thousand feet above the level of the sea, it was not subject to oppressive heats. There were fruitful gardens on the one hand, stretching for miles over the plain, and on the other, the placid lake, and snow-capped mountains; altogether forming a very striking landscape. A small Nestorian community had formed a settlement on the mountains within three or four hours of Van.

Dr. Grant reached the summer residence of the Patriarch on the 9th of July, and was cordially received as before; and the same may be said of his intercourse with the mountaineers. He mentions several places in Koordistan as having strong claims for a missionary station, but gives the preference to Asheta in Tiary.

While at Asheta, he received painful tidings of the death of Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell, and the sickness of Mr. and Mrs. Hinsdale, and immediately started for Mosul, though at much risk from Koords on the frontier, and from roving Arabs near the Tigris. He reached Mosul on the 25th of August, in time to minister successfully to Mr. Hinsdale, whose life had been seriously endangered by a relapse of fever.

Messrs. Hinsdale and Mitchell were forty-one days on their voyage to Smyrna, from whence an Austrian steamer took them to Beirût. Mr. and Mrs. Beadle accompanied them as far as Aleppo, to commence a new station. Mr. Mitchell had a slight attack of fever and ague at Aleppo, which detained him till the 28th of May. That was rather late in the season, still all might have gone well, had they been able to press on with the usual speed. The abundant green grass on the plain, however, caused the muleteers to loiter, and, once on the road, the company was entirely at their mercy. Still the journey, as far as Mardin, where they arrived June 19th, was both pleasant and prosperous. On the plain below the city Mr. Mitchell, in efforts to keep their tent from being blown down in a storm, became wet and chilled. This brought on another fit of ague, which was repeated after three days. On the 25th, with scarcely any apparent disease, he lost his reason, and from that time drooped, like the withering of a plant, till he died on the morning of June 27th, 1841. The Koordish villagers refused the Christian a grave, nor would they aid in carrying the body a few miles to the Jacobite village Telabel, The survivors had not strength themselves to carry it, but secured its conveyance thither as best they could. There they buried the mortal remains in the village cemetery, and two rude stones mark the grave.

Eight hours brought them in sight of the Tigris, at Beshabor. The next day they crossed on rafts supported by inflated goat-skins, and, on the 30th, rode six and a half hours to a Yezidee village. Next morning, after riding an hour, Mrs. Mitchell became too ill to proceed, and she lay four days in a mud hovel, among Arabs so rude that they could not be kept from the sick room, where they laid their hands on whatever they fancied. To remain there was out of the question, so Mr. Hinsdale constructed a litter, and at exorbitant prices obtained men from a distant village to carry it. She had to be repeatedly laid upon the ground, while he rode far and near to find four men willing to perform the degrading service of carrying a woman. At length the sun became so hot, that they could travel only by night. Their troubles were somewhat relieved by the services of a man, whom Mr. Rassam had kindly sent to meet them. On the 7th of July, they entered Mosul, and were cordially welcomed by Mr. and Mrs. Rassam. Mrs. Mitchell's disease then assumed a new form, and from that time till her death, on the 12th, her reason was dethroned. Mr. Hinsdale was taken violently ill before the death of Mrs. Mitchell, and Mrs. Hinsdale was unable to render any assistance to her husband. It was in these trying circumstances, that Dr. Grant so opportunely arrived.

There was ample evidence in the subsequent experience of the mission, that these fatal results were not owing to any peculiar hazard in the journey itself, though they may have resulted from the lateness of the season. All the way from Aleppo to Mosul, they had the assistance of Mr. Kotschy, who, in addition to his medical knowledge, had travelled seven years in Western Asia and Africa. The route, moreover, had been, and is still, one of the great highways of nations.

No doubt Divine Providence is always consistent with itself, and with the Saviour's promise; and so would it always appear to us, could we see, as God sees, the end from the beginning. To the devoted missionary, who dies at the outset of his career, all is satisfactory, however painful the circumstances, as soon as he passes the dark portal. Then, too, in contemplating the reverses which were now beginning to thicken upon the mission, we should bear in mind, that the divine plan for the Mountain Nestorian mission, as afterwards appeared, was not that it be prosecuted from the western side of the mountains, but from Oroomiah, the position first taken by the mission; where, as we shall soon see, Gospel influences were gathering a peculiar and most needful strength.

As soon as Mr. Hinsdale was able to travel, he accompanied Dr. Grant on a tour among the Yezidee and Nestorian villages lying near to Mosul.1

1 For an account of this tour, see Missionary Herald, 1842, pp. 310-320.

The Jacobites are a branch of the venerable Church of Antioch, and were then painfully struggling to repel the inroads of the Papacy. As soon as they learned the adherence of the American missionaries to the Bible, and their opposition to Papal innovations, they began to welcome them as friends. Having been duped by the plausible pretenses of the Papists, they were at first cautious in their advances; but a priest from the Syrian Christians in India, named Joseph Matthew, on his way to be ordained metropolitan by the Syrian Patriarch at Mardin, did much to dispel their fears, and promote friendly relations with the missionaries. He was a graduate of the English college at Cotayam, was evangelical in his views, spoke English with propriety, and at once gave the right hand of fellowship to the missionaries, and bespoke for them the confidence of the people. Early in the following year, he returned from Mardin as Bishop Athanasius, and consented to remain and preach among the Jacobites during Dr. Grant's absence in the summer.

Nûrûllah Bey had now commenced making war on the mountain Nestorians, with the aid of the Turks; and the Nestorians, split into hostile parties, were incapable of combined resistance. Suleiman Bey, being opposed to an alliance with Turkey, had seized the reins of government in the absence of the Emir; and since the object of the Osmanlis was to subjugate the Nestorians, as well as the Koords, the Patriarch naturally, but as it proved unhappily, sided with Suleiman.1

1 Dr. Grant and the Mountain Nestorians, p. 203.

Dr. Grant believed it would now be easier to enter the mountains from the east, than from the west. Accordingly he set out for Oroomiah, on the 6th of June, 1842, going the southern route by way of Ravandooz. Mr. Hinsdale and Bishop Athanasius accompanied him the first day. When about to return, the bishop offered prayer in the English language, and thus they parted, not all to meet again. Athanasius wrote a letter to Dr. Grant from Malabar, but with a date nearly a year subsequent to Dr. Grant's death, in which he stated, that his people had welcomed him with great joy, and gladly received the Word of God.1

1 Dr. Grant and the Mountain Nestorians, p. 219.

Dr. Grant crossed the plain of Arbela, where Alexander conquered Persia, and in ten days arrived at Oroomiah. Being impatient to get into the mountains, the mission assembled immediately, and delegated Mr. Stocking to accompany him. Dr. Wright said of him, at this time, that "his spirits were buoyant, his step elastic, and his energy untiring." Two Nestorians went with them, and they had letters from the governor and some Persian nobles to the Persian Khan and the Emir of the Hakary Koords. At Khosrawa, Mr. Stocking was constrained by sickness to return; and both the native assistants were so alarmed by the warlike aspect of things, that they declined going farther. The now solitary traveller succeeded, at the last moment, in getting the brave bishop Mar Yûsûf to be his companion.

The Emir had now broken his treaty with the Sultan, formed two years before in the hope of immediate aid to subdue the Nestorians; and had sworn perpetual allegiance to the Shah, who promised him support against the Sultan. Dr. Grant found Yahya Khan and the Emir at the castle of Charreh, on the summit of an isolated rock near the river of the same name. The tents of more than a dozen chiefs dotted the green banks of the stream. Nûrûllah Bey still professed to regard Dr. Grant as his physician and friend, and in the presence of the Khan promised to protect him and his associates, and permit them to erect buildings in Tiary for themselves and their schools.

The Khan, to whose friendly agency with the Emir Dr. Grant was specially indebted, had a good reputation for integrity. He was a Persian subject, then governor of Salmas, and also chief of a branch of the Hakary tribe. He had married a sister of the Emir, and given him one of his own in return, and another was in the harem of the Shah. He assured his missionary guest of the Emir's personal friendship, and interested himself for his future safety.

After sundry adventures among precipitous mountains and savage Koords, Dr. Grant was once more the guest of Mar Shimon, who kindly received the New Testament, the Psalms, and other books from the mission press. The Doctor was himself suffering from the effects of exposure in a wet dormitory the previous night; but the bracing air of that elevated region renewed his strength, and he was glad to resume his journey towards Asheta, which he had proposed as the site of his first mountain station. On this part of the way he had the company of Mar Shimon, who had then decided not to join the Koords and Persians against the Turks, having discovered that the strife between them was for the supremacy over his own people. Of the two he preferred the Turks. He was, however, advised by Dr. Grant to cultivate the friendship of the Emir. Further than this Dr. Grant would not interfere, being, fully resolved not to meddle with their political relations. A secret correspondence of the Patriarch with the Turkish Pasha, when discovered, cost him the favor of the Emir; and it soon became apparent that the Turks, whatever their pretensions, were resolved upon nothing short of the complete subjugation of his people. It was but too evident, also, to his missionary friend, that the Patriarch was himself more concerned for their political, than for their religious and moral condition.

Amadia, on the western frontier of the Nestorians, had now surrendered to the Turks; and the war on that side of the mountains being ended, Mr. Hinsdale left Mosul on the last day of September, and in eight days was at Asheta. The prospect from the summit on the western side of the valley was of singular beauty. The village of Asheta extended below him for a mile and a half, with numerous plats of grain and vegetables interspersed, the whole diversified with shade trees of various kinds. A short distance above the village was a deep ravine, from which the snow never disappeared. The spot selected for the mission house, was on the summit of a hill, near the centre of the village.

Soon after the arrival of Mr. Hinsdale, the papal bishop of Elkosh and an Italian priest found their way to Asheta. They stated to the Patriarch, that many boxes of presents were on their way from Diarbekir, and requested permission to remain till they arrived. The following Sabbath the Patriarch, with Mar Yûsûf and several priests, held a public discussion with them on the prominent errors of the Papacy. The result was not favorable to their object, and the next day their presents were returned, and they had permission to leave the country. They left during the week, but not till they had taken much pains, though apparently without success, to shake the Patriarch's confidence in the American missionaries. Soon after, early in November, Mr. Hinsdale returned to Mosul.

Up to this time, Mar Yûsûf had been fearless and tolerably patient, but he had now become heartily tired of the mountains, and longed for his peaceful home on the plain. It was the first time in a life of fifty years, that he had been ill when far from home. Yet he had been faithful in imparting religious instruction, and the missionary regretted his departure. Near the close of November, Dr. Grant received a letter from Nûrûllah Bey, requesting his professional services at Julamerk. His Nestorian friends strongly objected to his going, as they were apprehensive of treachery, and not without some reason; but he went, committing his way unto the Lord. He found the chief sick of fever, from which he recovered, through the blessing of God on the remedies employed. There was now opportunity to counteract reports intended to enlist the Emir in measures to destroy the mission. He became convinced that Dr. Grant was neither building a castle at Asheta, nor a bazaar to draw away the trade. Elsewhere, as will appear in the sequel, these reports had a more serious effect.

Dr. Grant had already heard of the arrival of the Rev. Thomas Laurie and wife at Mosul; and two days after, returning from Julamerk, he received the painful intelligence that Mr. Hinsdale was dangerously sick. He at once hastened to his relief, but he was too late. The devoted missionary rested from his labors on the 26th of December, at the age of thirty-five, after a sickness of twenty-four days. His disease was typhus fever. Mr. Hinsdale was a native of Torrington, Connecticut, and received his education at Yale College, and the Auburn Theological Seminary. "On the night of his decease," says Dr. Grant, "while his deeply afflicted wife and Mr. Laurie were sitting by him, he was heard to say, amid the wanderings of his disordered intellect; 'I should love to have the will of my Heavenly Father done!' It was his 'ruling passion strong in death.' Desiring to have the will of God done in all the earth, he had toiled to fit himself for the missionary work, and then, regardless of sacrifices, he had come to a field rich in promise, but full of hardships. His daily spirit, as evinced in all his actions, made me feel that he was just the man for this portion of the Lord's vineyard."

The Papists were, to say the least, not the main cause of Mar Shimon's alienation from his American friends. In 1840, after Dr. Grant had passed through the mountains the second time, on his return to America, the Patriarch was visited by Mr. Ainsworth, travelling at the expense of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Royal Geographical Society. The statements of this gentleman and of his companion, Mr. Rassam, to Mar Shimon, so resembled those made by the Papists, that the Patriarch suspected them of being Jesuits in disguise, and they actually left the mountains without removing that suspicion. Nor was it creditable to them, that they passed through Oroomiah without even calling on the American missionaries there.1

1 See Dr. Grant and the Mountain Nestorians, pp. 151-154. For Mr. Ainsworth's account of this visit, see Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, etc., vol. i. p. 1, and vol. ii. pp. 243-255. It is not necessary here to correct the erroneous statements in the passage referred to.

Had the interference gone no further, not much harm might have ensued. But Mr. Ainsworth's report induced the Christian Knowledge and Gospel Propagation Societies, in 1842, to send the Rev. George Percy Badger as a missionary to the Mountain Nestorians, or rather to the Patriarch and his clergy in the mountains. This was nine years after the commencement of the mission to the Nestorians at Oroomiah, eight years after the republication in England of the Researches of Messrs. Smith and Dwight among the Nestorians, and a year after the publication there of Dr. Grant's work, entitled "The Nestorians, or the Lost Tribes." Nor was there ever a time when the attention of the English nation was more directed to Western Asia.

How much the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London actually knew of the American mission, before officially and strongly commending Mr. Badger to the confidence of the Nestorian Patriarch, is not known. They make no reference whatever to that mission, and write as if they looked upon the field as entirely unoccupied, and open to a mission from the Church of England.

Mr. Badger spent the winter of 1842-43 in Mosul; and, early in the spring, before the mountain roads were open, and while Dr. Grant and Mr. Laurie were preparing at Mosul to visit Asheta, he hastened to the Patriarch, with letters and presents from the dignitaries of the Church of England. The civil relations of the Patriarch to the Koords, the Persians, and the Turks were such at that time, as to make him extremely anxious for the intervention of some foreign power; and he had been frankly told, by the American missionaries, that they could assure him of no such intervention. Coming with letters commendatory from the Primate of all England, the Lord Bishop of London, and the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, and with offers of schools, his power for good or evil must have been great. It cannot be that the patrons of Mr. Badger anticipated the attitude he would assume with regard to the American mission. The speedy close of his mission, may be assumed as proof that they did not. But while this is cheerfully admitted, the disastrous consequences of this interference should be distinctly stated. Mr. Badger gives the following account of his proceedings, in his report to the Committee of the Gospel Propagation Society, dated March 30, 1843. After stating the pains he took to explain the character, teaching, and discipline of his own Church, and how well his proposals to establish schools were received by Mar Shimon, he says, "The proceedings of the American Dissenters here necessarily formed a leading topic of our discourse. Through the influence of Nûrûllah Bey, they have been permitted to settle in the mountains, and two large establishments, one at Asheta and the other at Leezan, a village one day distant, are at present in course of being built. They have also a school in actual existence at Asheta, the expenses of which are defrayed by the Board, and, if I am rightly informed, another at Leezan. …. I did not fail to acquaint the Patriarch how far we are removed, in doctrine and discipline, from the American Independent missionaries. I showed him, moreover, that it would be injudicious, and would by no means satisfy us, to have schools among his people by the side of theirs, and pressed upon him to decide what plan he would pursue under existing circumstances. I think the Patriarch expressed his real sentiments on the peculiar doctrines of the Independents, when he said, 'I hold them as cheap as an onion;' but there are other considerations, which have more influence in inclining him to keep on friendly terms with the missionaries. In the first place, Dr. Grant has gained the apparent good will of Nûrûllah Bey, and the Patriarch may fear that, if he manifests any alteration in his conduct towards the American missionaries, the Emir might revenge it. Secondly, although I am fully convinced, that there is hardly a Nestorian in the mountains, who sympathizes with the doctrine or discipline of the Dissenters, whenever these differ from their own, yet I am persuaded, that, from the Patriarch to the poorest peasant, all value the important services of a good physician; and besides this, they highly prize the money which the missionaries have already expended, and are still expending among them with no niggardly hand, in presents, buildings, schools, etc."1

1 Nestorians and their Rituals, vol. i. pp. 248, 249.

The reader need not be told, that Congregationalists and Presbyterians are neither Dissenters nor Independents; and these two large bodies of Christians founded the mission.

The object of Mr. Badger was to alienate the Patriarch from the American mission; and he appears to have succeeded. Mar Shimon, in a letter addressed to the Archbishop and Bishops of the English Church, in August, 1843, speaks thus of the missionaries, with whom he was on confidential and somewhat intimate terms before the visit of Mr. Badger.

"Such was our condition, remaining in our own country in perfect peace and security, when, about three years since, persons came to us from the new world called America, and represented themselves as true Catholic Christians; but when we became acquainted with their way, we found that they held several errors, since they deny the order of the Priesthood committed to us by our Lord, nor do they receive the oecumenical councils of the Church, nor the true traditions of the holy Fathers, nor the efficacy of the sacraments of salvation, which Christ hath bequeathed to his Church, namely, Baptism, and the holy Eucharist; on which account we must beware of their working among us. But when your messenger, the pious presbyter George, came to us, and delivered into our hands your letters, we were filled with joy when we read their contents, and learned therefrom your spiritual and temporal prosperity. And we have now given up all others, that we may be united with you, in brotherhood and true Christian love."1

1 Nestorians and their Rituals, vol. i. p. 273.

Five months before the date of this letter, and after the return of Mr. Badger to Mosul, Dr. Grant received a letter from Mar Shimon, filled with Oriental protestations of undiminished attachment, and with urgent invitations to revisit the mountains. He went, accompanied by Mr. Laurie. They were kindly received as before, and spent several weeks with him, but found the Nestorians in constant dread of attacks from the Koords.

Meanwhile the reports, which had been put in circulation with regard to Dr. Grant's operations at Asheta, in the way of building, were communicated by the Pasha of Mosul to the Pasha of Erzroom, and by him to Constantinople. It is not probable that the reports were believed anywhere; but as the government was then intent upon subjugating that portion of the empire, they were unwilling to have the mountaineers enlightened and elevated. Accordingly they refused firmans to Dr. Azariah Smith and Rev. Edwin E. Bliss, in case they were going as missionaries to the Nestorians, for these would pledge to them the protection of the government; though they would grant them passports to go where they pleased. The Turkish minister even declared to Mr. Brown, our Charge d'affaires at the Porte, that they did not wish schools to be opened in the mountains.

In June, Dr. Grant, by special invitation, visited Bader Khan Bey, the most powerful chief in Koordistan. The journey occupied him five days, by way of Zakhu and Jezireh. The castle of the chief lay sixteen or eighteen miles northeast of Jezireh, in a pass among the mountains. He found there his old friend, of Koordish sincerity, Nûrûllah Bey, who had come to engage the Buhtan chief in the subjugation of the Nestorians. The fearless missionary spent ten days with these "deceitful and bloody" men. They made no concealment of their designs upon the Nestorians, but promised safety and protection to the mission-house and property at Asheta.

The successful attack soon after made on the hitherto independent Nestorians, appears to have had its origin in the Turkish government. Only unity of action could now save the Nestorians, and that unity was wanting. The Buhtan Koords came upon them from the northwest, and the Hakary tribes from the northeast and east. On the south was a Turkish army from the Pasha of Mosul, while the Ravandooz Koords are said to have been ready for an onset from the southeast. Diss, the district in which the Patriarch resided, and Tiary were soon laid waste by the combined force of the Buhtan and Hakary Koords. Many were slain, and among them the Patriarch's mother, a brother, and a fine youth who was regarded as the probable successor to the Patriarch. The valuable patriarchal library of manuscripts was destroyed. When the work of destruction began, Dr. Grant was in the southeast part of Tiary. From thence, without returning to Asheta, where the Patriarch then was, he hastened, by way of Lezan and Amadia, to Mosul, where great fears had been entertained for his safety. He reached Mosul on the morning of July 14, 1843, much fatigued with his journey, but in tolerably good health.

In the first invasion, Asheta and three other large villages in Tiary were spared the general destruction. Previous to November, however, the Nestorians of these villages rose upon the Koordish governor, and wounded him; and this occasioned the destruction of these villages, and the massacre of their inhabitants. Nothing was spared except the house Dr. Grant had erected, and that was converted into a fortress. Of the seventy-four priests in Tiary, twenty-four were killed, whose names were known. The districts east of Diss and Tiary were not destroyed. The tribes of Tehoma, Bass, and Jelu suffered comparatively little in either of the invasions, except in the loss of their property and their independence. After the disasters of Tiary and Diss, each of the remaining tribes sent in its submission. The Patriarch fled to Mosul. Several of his brothers fled to Oroomiah, and there threw themselves on the hospitality of the mission, which in their destitute circumstances could not be refused. Many were sold into slavery. Of the fifty thousand mountain Nestorians, the estimated number before the war, one fifth part were numbered with the slain.

Mrs. Laurie was called on the 16th of December, to rest from her labors. "In her last hours," writes Dr. Grant, "she was mercifully delivered alike from bodily pain and from mental anxieties. A noble testimony of Christian devotedness had been given in her consecration to one of the most difficult and trying fields in modern missions; and death to her was but the Saviour's welcome to mansions of undisturbed repose."

It has been stated that the Turkish government had refused a firman to Dr. Azariah Smith, in case he were a missionary to the Nestorians of Koordistan. He accordingly remained in the Armenian mission, where he found useful occupation till the arrival of the Foreign Secretary; when it was arranged that he should proceed to Mosul by way of Beirut and Aleppo, and either remain permanently connected with the mission, or return to the Armenians as a missionary physician. A firman was now given him, and he reached Mosul in safety on the 29th of March. Little did any one think that his first duty would be to smooth Dr. Grant's descent to the grave, yet an all-wise Providence had so ordained. A typhoid fever, which had carried off many of the refugee Nestorians in Mosul, seized their beloved physician on the 5th of April. He was delirious from the moment it assumed a threatening character, and died on the 24th of April, 1844.

While the author was at Constantinople, he received a letter from Dr. Grant, stating how much his presence was needed, for a time, by his children at home. The case being urgent, he was encouraged to return and was preparing for this, when his gracious Lord called him into his presence above. The tidings of his dangerous sickness awakened much interest in Mosul. People of every rank, men of all sects and religions, watched the progress of his disease with the most earnest anxiety. The French Consul visited him almost daily. The Turkish authorities sent to inquire for him, and some came in person. One, who arrived immediately after his decease, could not refrain from tears when he heard of it. A leading Jacobite remarked, that all Mosul was weeping. The poor Patriarch, roused to a sense of his loss, exclaimed, "My country and my people are gone! Nothing remains to me but God!"