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tribes and clans. These latter seldom attend to agriculture, while the others never become soldiers. A tribesman confessed to Mr. Rich, that he believed the peasant was only created for his use; and

"Wretched indeed," says he, "is the

condition of the Koordish cultivators. It much resembles that of a negro slave in the West Indies; and the worst of it is, I have never found it possible to make

these Koordish masters ashamed of their cruelty to their poor dependents."

But, while the unfortunate peasant is thus put out of the pale of pity, the attachment of a clansman, to every member of his tribe,-the sacrifices he is ready to make for him, is absurdly romantic, particularly to their chiefs:

"In Bagdad they live with their mas

out a murmur, with every sort of privaters in miserable exile, struggling, withtion and suffering. Gentlemen who, in their own country, have a horse handsomely caparisoned, and a servant, are seen in Bagdad in rags, and are frequently known to work as porters, or water-carriers, that they may take their day's wages to their master, to contribute to his support. When the brother of Abdurrhaman Pasha died at Bagdad, one of his Koords was standing on the terrace, or flat roof of the house, at the moment his master expired, What!' said he, is the Bey dead?-then I will not live another moment.' And he immediately threw himself off the top of the house, and was dashed to pieces.'

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This human sacrifice, either voluntary or involuntary, is of very ancient usage here. Herodotus mentions that it was usual among the Scythians, on the death of their king, to offer up his prime ministers as proper victims to his manes.

Koord is probably a corruption of the ancient name, Kagdoux, given by Xenophon to these mountaineers, through whose mountains the Grecians passed in their memorable retreat from Persia; but they do not seem to retain any tradition of the event. The Pasha had promised to procure for Mr. Rich a famous History of Koordistan, called Tarikh al Akrad. return, said he,

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"I told him the story of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand, and the ancient

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other Greeks and events. In a room They have traditions, however, of next to one appropriated for his reception, our author found sundry paintings, representing various persons and events. One of the former was Alexander the Great, "with a watch lying beside him!" dressed in the Persian fashion, with the face of a coquetish woman. This reminds one of the anachronism of the Dutch painter, fant Jesus, a little gun. They have, who represented the wise men presenting, among other gifts, to the inhowever, a tradition of this extraordi nary conqueror, that he was a beardless and a beautiful young man. In another room were various tawdry paintings, representing several famous persons, from Solomon down to Buonaparte,-which last, with more propriety than Alexander, had a musket and bayonet in his hand. On the side of this picture-gallery were two other smaller ones, called Bala Koneh, from whence, says our author, is derived our English word balcony. We, certainly, were not aware, nor Johnson either, that any word in our language came from the mountains of Koordistan. This is a pendant for another etymology from Toorkistan, in the same neighbourhood. The Turks, it seems, Doodli; whence some etymologists call America, as the new world, Yeni derive the much controverted Yankidoodle.

is Sulimania, built about thirty-six The present capital of Koordistan years, and called after a pasha of Bag

dad. On its site stood an ancient mount, which they pared down, and found among its rubbish some coins, so as to indicate that it had been the ten thousand people, in two thousand spot of some former city. It contains Mohammedan houses, one hundred and thirty Jewish, nine of Chaldean Christians, who have a wretched small church, and five of Armenian

Christians, who have neither church or priest. The Mohammedans have five mosques; and for the whole population there are six caravansaries, and five public baths. The former capital was Karstcholan, which was abandoned for a characteristic reason, because it stood in a rocky valley, unfavourable for the enjoyment of hunting. The ordinary houses are mere mud hovels, which cover the town, and resemble an Arab village. They are quite open and exposed; but the inhabitants do not seem to regard this, as the women go about like men, and perform their ordinary business with their faces displayed, without any veils. This extraordinary deviation from Oriental usage, is probably the result of that free and unrestrained condition which mountaineers always enjoy, and which mixes itself with all their feelings. The Bagdad merchants, who resort here on their business, and who bring with them their rigid notions of female seclusion, were not only shocked at this exposure, but were greatly scandalized at the simple question, usually put to them, "what is your wife's name?" "How does she dress?" In the mountains of Shina, which abound in the magnificent Oriental platanus, and where timber merchants go to purchase wood for the plains of the Euphrates, men and women live together openly, without restraint, or the affectation of conceal

ment.

Nevertheless, the Koords are such rigid Mohammedans, that in three years two thousand persons, from the province of Sulimania alone, descend ed from their elevation, crossed the burning deserts of Arabia, and visited the tomb of their prophet at Mecca. Those who have done so are distinguished ever after by the privilege of wearing a white turban.

The principal amusement of the Koords is partridge-fighting. The little birds are trained up like game cocks with us, and show, like them, astonishing spirit and resolution.

There is generally a large house in the meidan, or open space left for the purpose, which is a club-house, where, at sunset the better sort assemble and make partridge-matches. The Koords, it appears, are the only Mohammedans who sit up late at night, not retiring to rest with the sun, as is the general

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usage of Turks and Persians. Constantinople a respectable Turk, seen in the streets after dark, is a phenomenon; and if any man be not preceded by a servant and lantern he is taken up by the Coolok guard. But night is the visiting time of the Koords. When it grows dark, they begin to go about to each other's houses, and amuse themselves with conversation, smoking, and music, till three or four in the morning, before which time no gentleman thinks of retiring to rest. In other respects, also, they differ greatly from their retiring, unsocial, and taciturn neighbours of the same faith. They are remarkably cheerful-very fond of company-have no pride-practise no ceremonious formalities. There is one trait of character very remarkable indeed, in which we wish many European and cultivated Christians would imitate them. They are divested of all envy; and our author "never heard a Koord speak an ill word of another, however different they may be in party or interest." We quote this for the benefit of our Whigs and Tories.

The condition, also, of their women is another remarkable deviation from oriental usage, and Mohammedan prejudice. They are treated as equals by their husbands, and laugh at or despise the slavish subjection of Turkish wives. There is a domestic comfort and equality in a Koordish house, which is unknown among other Moslems, and a confidence entirely divested of that brutal precaution which stigmatizes them. The male servants who attend the Harems, are not the revolting mutilated objects one sees among other oriental people. They are as welllooking, and well bearded as European domestics. The women never hide themselves in terror at the sight of any man but their husbands; and when Mrs. Rich returned the visits of Koordish ladies, she always found a mixture of both sexes to receive her. Women of the better classes wear a veil of black horse hair, which they seldom let fall over their faces, unless when they wish to avoid the notice of some person they meet, and the lower classes go about freely without any covering to their face, forming a strong contrast to the same classes in Turkey, where, when a woman does come forth, no

thing is seen uncovered but her nose. A still more remarkable display occurs, which would scandalize even European notions of female freedom. The houses of Sulimania are very low, scarcely more than five or six feet high, with flat roofs, which are frequently made in summer the sleeping apartments in the open air. In walking through the narrow streets, the head sometimes is above the roof of the house, and those who pass early in the morning, see the man and his wife in bed together, close beside him, and sometimes rising out of it to go to their daily occupation. "Notwithstanding, however," says our author, "this freedom and apparent shamelessness, no women can conduct themselves with more real propriety than the Koordish ladies, and their morality far exceeds that of the Turkish females." Mr. Rich concludes his visit to Koordistan, with this estimate of a people we have always considered as a horde of robbers and murderers:

"I left Koordistan with unfeigned regret. I most unexpectedly found in it the best people that I have ever met with in the east. I have formed friendships, and been uniformly treated with a degree of sincerity, kindness, and unbounded hospitality, which I fear I must not again look for in the course of my weary pilgrimage, and the remembrance will last as long as life endures."

This character of the people is very well for Mr. Rich, and no doubt justified by what he had experienced; but it must be recollected he travelled in the country with a large escort, protected under the sacred sanction of being in some measure an ambassador, and strongly recommended to the care of the authorities. Those who pass through it without those advantages, meet a very different reception. It is a kind of boundary between Turkey and Persia, and the people are at present in that state of society, in which the borderers on the marches of England and Scotland lived in former times. They are all freebooters, and live by plunder as their trade. All the travellers who make this their way from Constantinople to India, know this by experience. They always calculate on the loss of property, or hazard of life in this wild region, and their Surrogees, or Tartar janissaries, as we happen to

know, often return to Constantinople with the point of a Koord's pike in the back of their neck. This state of things Mr. Rich himself acknowledges in some parts. "We were obliged," said he, "to keep a sharp look out for thieves-this place being infamous for them; and nothing but their poverty protected the poor Chaldeans from their attacks."

Having ascended the mountains of the Koords, we were in great hopes our travellers would have penetrated into the country of the Chaldeans, and given some detailed account of those primitive Christians. We recollect a notice of these interesting people was published in an early number of our "Christian Examiner," about 15 years ago, contained in a letter from a correspondent at Constantinople. It excited much curiosity and remark at the time-as the existence of such a Christian nation in the centre of Asiatic mountains was scarcely known. Since travellers skirted the confines of Chalthat time Kinnaird, Frazer, and other dea, and gave some scattered notices of the inhabitants en passant. We expected that Mr. Rich would have connected the detached sketches, and filled up his account by a perfect picture of the place and people, from actual residence among them at their capital. But he has not done so, and we confess we are disappointed that he seems to take but little interest in the subject. He does, indeed, notice the people, passes through some of their towns, and visits one of their convents; but it is only that portion of them who have been converted by missionaries from the college de propaganda fide at Rome, and they are no more than Roman Catholics scattered through the skirts of the mountains. The primitive Nestorian race, who refuse all submission to the papal see, and renounce all connection with its doctrines or discipline

whose capital is Jolemark, in a mountain ravine, and whose country is defended by a natural battlement of rocks-who wear felt hats like Europeans, and have a patriarch of their own creed-have not yet been explored, or, as far as we know, visited by any intelligent traveller. What Mr. Rich has seen, however, must not be omitted.

He visited the town of Teliskof, or

Bishops Mount, entirely inhabited by Chaldean Christians, about 20 miles north of Mousul :

"The crowds assembled to see us were prodigious, and the village seemed to pour forth twice as many people as I thought it would have contained. They were all Chaldean Catholics. I have never been so much stared at in a Mohammedan town. The Christians seemed to take a pride in me, and to look at the Turks with me, and before whom they had been used to cower, as if they might now defy them. This made me have some patience with them, though their crowding and staring was rather incommodious. We were met at a mile from the village, by the Kiahya; and an old woman wanted to burn incense before me, but my horse would admit of no such familiarity. We lodged, of course, in the best house, close by the old mount which gives a name to the village. It would be a tolerable place but for the extreme dirtiness, which, with the smell of liquor, is, I am sorry to say, the characteristic of a Christian village in this country."

Mr. Rich had seen no Christians but

Roman Catholics; and we are sorry to say the character is universal. He need not have travelled farther than Ireland to

ing characteristic of every village in see dirt and drunkenness the prevailMunster and Connaught. The primitive Nestorians, who, by other accounts, are a different people in their habits, had all retired to the mountains, or been absorbed among the converts. For more than 25 years there had been no Nestorians nearer than Amadia, or rather beyond Ama

dia."

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Near the town of Alkosh, at greater distance from Mousul, he visited a very singular monastery:

"The town of Alkosh, entirely inhabited by Chaldean Christians, was just before us a little way up the foot of the mountain, and on the right of it, about a mile higher up, in a rocky defile or opening in the mountain, was the Chaldean convent of Rabban Hormuzd, whither we were journeying, and which from this spot had a very imposing appearance. Nothing was clearly distinguishable but a heavy square building, of a dusky red colour, hanging quite over a precipice, like some Lama pagoda. The dark clouds rolled over the summit of the mountain, almost down to the convent,

and greatly increased the gloominess of its aspect and its apparent height. We seemed to be retreating from the world, and entering on some wild and untried state of existence, when we found ourselves in the rocky strait by which it was approached. The situation seemed well chosen for devotion; but devotion of a savage and gloomy character. The hill gradually rose very soon after the slope had terminated. An immense torrent, now dry, had brought down prodigious fragments of rock. Keeping along its edge we reached, at eleven o'clock, the entrance into the defile, along a rocky and rough road. This defile expands and scoops out the mountain into a kind of wild amphitheatre, in which, not halfway up, the convent is situated. It is only the latter part of the road that was very steep. The red building we had seen from afar was part of a church, or rather churches, there being several together. All the amphitheatre, from the top to the bottom, is full of little caves and grottos

those near the church, and extending up the rock far above it, being appropriated to the use of the monks, of whom there are fifty, only four or five of whom are priests. Each monk has a separate cell, and the communications between them are by little terraces. The rocks are the church is built. craggy and broken, and of fine harmonious tints, being of freestone, of which It is now under

going a thorough repair, in a very neat manner. It stands on a platform, elevated from the precipice; but very little

of the ancient fabric remains.

We

"We arrived at half-past eleven. lodging, in a kind of sacristy or chapel were accommodated in rather an airy adjoining the church. Our people established themselves as well as they could in the surrounding caves, and the horses we sent back to the village.

"In the afternoon I went to vespers. The congregation of rather dark-looking monks, together with the gloominess and simplicity of the church, which is merely a narrow, arched or vaulted room, with no light but what is admitted from a small dome, might well remind one of the solitude of St. Saba. Indeed the monks were not less Thebaid in their appearance, being dusky looking men, clothed in the coarsest manner, like peasants, but more sombre in their colours-their gown being of a dark blue or black canvas, with the cominon abba or Arab cloak of brown woollen over it. On their heads they wear a small skull

cap of brown felt, with a black handkerchief tied round it. The priests are rather better clothed, in black dresses, with black turbans on their heads. The monks are of all trades, weavers, tailors, smiths, carpenters, and masons; so that the wants of the convent are entirely supplied by the convent itself. Their wants are, indeed, very few-the order being that of St. Anthony, and very rigorous in its observances. The monks never eat meat, except at Christmas and Easter. Sometimes, indeed, if any of their friends bring them a little as a present, they are not forbidden to eat it; but no meat is provided for the convent. Their daily food is some boiled wheat and bread, and even this in small quantities. Wine and spirits are altogether prohibited, and none but the treasurer is allowed to touch money."

The Editor adds :

"The monks live separately in their cells, when not employed in their work, and are forbidden to talk to one another. A bell summons them to church several times a day, besides which they meet at church at midnight for prayers; again at daybreak and sunset, when they retire to their cells without fire or candle. Some of these cells are far from the others, in very lonely situations, high up the mountains in steep places, and look difficult to get at by day; but how much more so in dark and stormy nights! They are surrounded by wild plundering tribes of Koords, who might come down and murder them in their different retreats, without their cries for help being heard; but their poverty preserves them from such

attacks."

The quantity of those caves or little grottos scattered over all the hollow of the mountain, is surprising. An earthquake filled up a great number of them, and many are obliterated by the crumbling of the rock washed down by the mountain rains. Many may have been natural, but many more, are evidently artificial. Some resembled depositories for dead bodies; and Mr. Rich conjectures it might have been originally a dakhmeh or burying-place for the ancient Persians. About 500 volumes of old MSS. on vellum, appear to have been formerly kept at this convent, but they were thrown into an old vault, at the side of the hill, a part of which was carried away by a mountain torrent, and the whole col

lection was so damaged, they were carelessly torn up or thrown about. Some scattered leaves were produced, which appeared evidently of the highest antiquity. Mr. Rich justly remarks that manuscripts are fast perishing in the East, and it is the duty of every traveller to rescue as many as he can from destruction. Of this he has set a laudable example in his own person. He procured several Chaldean MSS. in his present tour, and it appears that he sent 800 in different languages to the British Museum, collected in the East, of which 3 are in Greek; 59 in Syriac; 8 in Carshunia; 389 in Arabic; 231 in Persian; 108 in Turkish; 2 in Armenian; and 1 in Hebrew. One of them is the New Testament in Syriac, written in 768 of our era, and so the most ancient copy now extant.

It is to be deplored that our author did not apply himself as assiduously to acquire other qualifications necessary for a tourist, as well as the important one of languages. He regrets, as we have occasion to do, that he knows little of botany, in countries of such various aspects, and abounding in such vegetable riches, which have never been explored. What additions might he not have made to those of Hasselquest, Forskal, Shaw, and others, who have their botanical knowledge so applied as to be subservient to biblical and other illustrations! What acquisitions might not geology obtain, in that spine of the earth, the central ridges of Asia, which no intelligent traveller has explored, since Noah anchored his ark on the top of one of them. Even his knowledge of languages seems confined to oriental literature. We naturally expected classical illustrations of Xenophon, &c. but have been obliged to offer a scanty supply ourselves. Notwithstanding these deficiences, which we remark with great diffidence, and a few others of style and arrangement, which we pass over, we are disposed to say that this posthumous work is one of the most important and interesting that has been published of this often visited but little known portion of Asia. We should add that the work is illustrated by maps and plates, with copious appendices, one of which contains a lively sketch, by Mrs. Rich, of the particulars of this tour.

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