which seemed to bid defiance to the infidel invader; and in thinking of the message of peace and love which I was commissioned to carry to these long-neglected followers of Christ, I forgot, in hopeful musing upon the future, the toil of ten hours' walk through fields of snow and over rugged and precipitous mountains. Before the jovial guards had ceased their melody I was locked in a sound sleep from which I did not wake till the grey morn warned us that it was time to pursue our onward journey.
Feb. 26th.—We left Bedu at 7 a.m. with the wind blowing very cold, and the heavens threatening a storm. Our course lay first through a valley, on which the snow lay several feet deep, and in two hours reached the foot of an almost perpendicular ascent called Pyâri, covered with snow from its base to the summit. Here our toil began: after every few steps we were obliged to rest, taking the greatest care lest by some mishap we should lose our balance and thus be precipitated into the ravine below. When we reached the top, which it took us upwards of an hour to accomplish, we found ourselves as it were in a sea of snow: not a speck of earth nor the branch of a tree was to be seen, with the exception of a pile of stones raised upon an elevated spot to mark the direction of the road. Mountains upon mountains rose before and around us, and I could scarcely realize the fact that I was travelling to a habitable part of the world.—Such are the ramparts which have for ages secured the Nestorians of Tyari from the Moslem bondage and Roman domination, to which their brethren of the plains have so long been subjected; but which, alas! have now been crossed by the armies of the infidels who will rule them with a rod of iron.
After travelling for an hour and a half over this elevated tableland we reached the edge of the descent which leads directly to Asheetha. An immense peak, the base of which stretched down into the valley in which the village is situated to the depth of several thousand feet, and towered above our heads almost to an equal height, seemed to mock every attempt to traverse its snow-clad sides. It made one giddy barely to look down the precipice before us; but how we were to descend this awful cliff was still a problem which I could not solve. A narrow way
