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The evening air is cool with a suggestion of frostiness, and the occupants of the tent are found crouching around a smoking tezek fire; they are ragged and of rather unprepossessing appearance, but being instinctively hospitable, they shuffle around to make me welcome at the fire; at first I almost fancy myself mistaken in thinking them Koords, for there is nothing of the neatness and cleanliness of our late acquaintances about them; on the contrary, they are almost as repulsive as their sedentary relatives of Dele Baba-but a little questioning removes all doubt of their being Koords.
Deacon Guwergis, prevented from going to the mountains, for the Koords sided with Mar Shimon, fearlessly encountered the revilings of the patriarch in his own house, and told him that he hoped to continue preaching till he died. His countenance must have shone like Stephen's, for his persecutor said to one of the attendants, "See how his face glistens.
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.
Upon sober second thought, when well away from the vicinity, I conclude this to have been a rather ticklish incident; had they attacked me in the absence of anything else to defend myself with, I should have been compelled to shoot them; the nearest Persian village is about ten miles distant; the absence of anything like continuously ridable road would have made it impossible to out-distance their horsemen, and a Persian village would have afforded small security against a party of enraged Koords, after all.
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.
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.
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.
One is compelled to draw the line somewhere, even under the most uncompromising circumstances, and I naturally draw it against eating yaort with this same wooden spoon; making small scoops with pieces of bread, I dip up yaort and eat scoop and all together. These particular Koords seem absolutely ignorant of anything in the shape of mannerliness, or of consideration for each other at the table.
Not more than five miles eastward from the camp, while trundling over a stretch of stony ground, I am accosted by a couple of Koordiah shepherds; but as the country immediately around is wild and unfrequented, save by Koords, and knowing something of their little weaknesses toward travellers under tempting, one-sided conditions, I deem it advisable to pay as little heed to them as possible.
Towards evening I ascend into a more mountainous region, inhabited exclusively by nomad Koords; from points of vantage their tents are observable clustered here and there at the bases of the mountains. Descending into a grassy valley or depression, I find myself in close proximity to several different camps, and eagerly avail myself of the opportunity to pass a night among them.
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