Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/270

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THE NESTORIANS AND THEIR RITUALS.

and is almost confined to the fabrication of agricultural implements, which each peasant generally manufactures for himself. Of iron they have abundance in several parts of Tyari; this they smelt and beat out into rude plough-shares and such other tools as they require for tillage. The people of Asheetha, however, are famed for tempering steel, and the best packing needles used by the Coordish muleteers, are made in this village. There are several mines of lead at Doori, in the Berwari, and at Serspeedho, in lower Tyari, as also sulphur mines in other parts of the mountains, from which the Nestorians prepare their own bullets and gunpowder. Silversmiths they have none, and in fine, scarcely any other trades than those already mentioned are known among them. For the most part, each man is his own farmer's joiner and blacksmith, and his wife, besides attending to the domestic concerns of the family, acts as his help-mate in these several avocations.


NESTORIAN HOUSE IN THE TYARI.