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The interesting scenes of these awakenings are thus gratefully recalled by Sanum, a convert of the first revival, in a letter dated Salmas, June 6th, 1859:
The arrangement had all been made by my parents, and the betrothal feast made ready. Sanum and I were in Oroomiah, but Deacon Joseph was in Salmas, and we had also this comfort my oldest brother stood firm, saying, "Fear not; till death I stand." Raheel also was firm, hoping for help. With entreaties and tears, I asked Deacon Isaac to go to Salmas. He went, but Raheel knew it not.
The English at Tabriz confessed to an almost entire ignorance of the religious doctrines and character of the Nestorians. The only important fact our brethren could learn there was, that a considerable body of them were accessible in the provinces of Oroomiah and Salmas, at the distance of somewhat more than a hundred miles.
Our travellers remained at Tabriz from the 18th of December to March, 1831, when restored health and the opening season permitted them to resume their journey. In Salmas, they first came in contact with the Chaldeans, as those Nestorians were called who had been won over by Roman Catholic missionaries since the year 1681. The name means no more than papal Syrians, or papal Armenians.
Having laid aside the shroud-like veils which Moorish ladies wear when exposed to the slightest chance of meeting the gaze of man, they now stood confessed in all the magnificence of Oriental taste. It is impossible to describe the dazzling splendour of the jewels with which their costumes absolutely blazed; especially those in the little golden caps, or salmas, which some of them wore.
Again, in January, 1858, two pious residents at Khosrowa, in the province of Salmas, were shamefully oppressed; and when application was made for redress, Asker Khan not only refused to adjudicate the matter, but beat one of the complainants so severely that he was confined to his bed for weeks.
After long effort, an officer was sent from Tabreez to Salmas, and ample promises of full redress were given, ending, as usual, in nothing. A mob, headed by a French Lazarist and native bishop, rescued the offender, and the officer desisted from further procedure. The reader will be interested in the following extract, from a letter of Hoimar to Miss Fiske, in 1859:
Two days answered for the enterprise. At the end of that time the governor, Don Diego de Salmas, capitulated, and Gibraltar was taken possession of in the name of Queen Anne of England, the prince being left there with a garrison of two thousand men. From that time to this Gibraltar has remained an outpost of Great Britain, with whose outlying strongholds the whole world bristles.
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.
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.
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