a most undignified epithet as he passed; which, had it beer overheard by the people of the village, might have led to hostilities. Although I might not have expressed myself so forcibly as the Cawass, I could not but concur generally in his opinion when reflecting that this man, and some others of the same class, had been the chief cause of the massacres of the unfortunate Christians; and that, at that moment, his son, Sheikh Tahar, was urging Beder Khan Bey to prove his religious zeal by shedding anew the blood of the Nestorians. We stopped for the night in the large Catholic Chaldæan village of Mungayshi, containing above forty Christian houses, a new church, and two priests.

A pass, over a richly wooded range of hills, leads from Mungayshi into a fertile plain, watered by several streams, and occupied by many Kurdish villages. Beyond, the mountains are naked and most barren. We wandered for some hours amongst pinnacles, through narrow ravines, and over broken rocks of sandstone, all scattered about in the wildest confusion. Not a blade of vegetation was to be seen; the ground was parched by the sun, and was here and there blackened by volcanic action. We came to several hot, sulphurous springs, bubbling up in the valley, and forming large pools. In the spring the Kurds and the inhabitants of the surrounding villages congregate near these reservoirs, and pitch their tents for nearly a month to bathe in the waters, which have a great reputation for medicinal qualities.

A long defile brought us to the town of Dohuk, formerly a place of some importance, but now nearly in ruins. It is built on an island formed by a small stream, and probably occupies an ancient site. Its castle, a mud building with turrets, was held for some time, by the hereditary Kurdish chief of the place, against Injeh Bairakdar Mohammed Pasha; but was re

This fanatic, who was one of Beder Khan Bey's principal advisers, when entering Mosul, was accustomed to throw a veil over his face, that his sight might not be polluted by Christians, and other impurities in the place. He exercises an immense influence over the Kurdish population, who look upon him as a saint and worker of miracles

duced, and has since been inhabited by a Turkish governor. Ismail Bey, the Mutesellim, received me very civilly, and I breakfasted with him. The son of a neighbouring Kurdish chief was visiting the Bey. He was dressed in most elaborately embroidered garments, had ponderous jewelled rings in his ears, carried enormous weapons in his girdle, and had stuck in his turban a profusion of marigolds and other flowers. He was a handsome, intelligent boy; but, young as he might be, he was already a precocious pupil of Sheikh Tahar; and when I put him upon a religious topic, he entered most gravely into an argument to prove the obligation imposed upon Mussulmans to exterminate the unbelievers, supporting his theological views by very apt quotations from the Koran.

My horses, which had been sent from Amadiyah, were waiting for me here; and, leaving our jaded mules, we proceeded to the Christian village of Malthaiyah, about one hour beyond, and in the same valley as Dohuk. Being anxious to visit the rock-sculptures near this place, I took a peasant with me and rode to the foot of a neighbouring hill. A short walk up a very difficult ascent brought me to the monuments.

Four tablets have been cut in the rock; each occupied by nine figures. The subjects represented in the four bas-reliefs are similar, and appear to be an adoration of the gods by two kings. The first god wears the square horned cap, surmounted by a point, or fleur-de-lys; holds a ring in one hand, and a thong or snake in the other, and stands on two animals, a bull and a kind of gryphon, or lion with the head of an eagle, but without wings. The second divinity is beardless, also carries a ring, and is seated on a chair, the arms and lower parts of which are supported by human figures with tails, and by birds with human heads. The whole rests on two animals, a lion and a bull. The third divinity resembles the first, and stands on a winged bull. The four following have stars with six rays on the horned cap. The first of them has a ring in one hand, and stands on a gryphon without wings; the second also

holds a ring, and is raised on a horse caparisoned as in the sculptures of Khorsabad; the third wields an object precisely

Assyrian Deity. On a rock tablet at Malthaiyah.

similar to the conventional thunderbolt of the Greek Jove, and is supported by a winged lion; the fourth is beardless, carries a ring, and stands on a lion without wings.

The two kings who are facing the divinities, have one hand elevated, and bear an object resembling a mace, always represented as carried by the monarch when engaged in religious ceremonies.

All the tablets have suffered much from exposure to the atmosphere, and one has been almost destroyed by the entrance into a tomb, which was probably cut in the rock at a long period subsequent to the Assyrian empire.

The details in the bas-reliefs are similar in character to those on the later Assyrian monuments, and are interesting in many respects. The thrones or arm-chairs, supported by animals and human figures, resemble those of the ancient Egyptians, and of the monuments of Kouyunjik, Khorsabad, and Persepolis. They also remind us of the throne of Solomon, which had "stays (or arms) on either side on the place of the seat, and two lions stood beside the stays. And twelve lions stood there, on the one side and on the other upon the six steps."*

I returned to the village after sunset. My Cawass and servants had established themselves for the night on the roof of the church; and the Kiayah had prepared a very substantial repast. The inhabitants of Malthaiyah are Catholic Chaldæans; their conversion not dating many years. The greater part joined us in the evening.

* 1 Kings, x. 19, 20.

Next morning we rode over a dreary plain to Alkosh. In a defile, through the hills behind the village, I observed several

rock-tombs,-excavations similar to those of Malthaiyah; some having rude ornaments above the entrance, the door-ways of others being simply square holes in the rock.

Alkosh is a large Christian village. The inhabitants, who were formerly pure Chaldæans, have been converted to Roman Catholicism. It contains, according to a very general tradition, the tomb of Nahum, the prophet-the Alkoshite, as he is called in the introduction to his prophecies. It is a place held in great reverence by Mohammedans and Christians, but especially by Jews, who keep the building in repair, and flock here in great numbers at certain seasons of the year. The tomb is a simple plaster box, covered with green cloth, and standing at the upper end of a large chamber. On the walls of the room are pasted slips of paper, upon which are written, in distorted Hebrew characters, religious exhortations, and the dates and particulars of the visits of various Jewish families. The house

containing the tomb is a modern building. There are no inscriptions, nor fragments of any antiquity about the place; and I am not aware in what the tradition originated, or how long it has attached to the village of Alkosh.*

After visiting the tomb, I rode to the convent of Rabban Hormuzd, built on the almost perpendicular sides of lofty rocks, enclosing a small recess or basin, out of which there is only one outlet, a narrow and precipitous ravine, leading abruptly into the plains. The spot is well suited to solitude and devotion. Half buried in barren crags, the building can scarcely be distinguished from the natural pinnacles by which it is surrounded. There is scarcely a blade of vegetation to be seen, except a few olive trees, encouraged, by the tender solicitude of the monks, to struggle with the barren soil. Around the convent, in almost every accessible part of the mountain, are a multitude of artificial chambers in the rock, said to have once served as retreats for a legion of hermits, and from which most probably were ejected the dead, to make room for the living; for they appear to have been, at a very remote period, places of burial. The number of these recesses must at one time have been very considerable. They are now rapidly disappearing, and have been so doing for centuries. Still the sides of the ravine are in some places honey-combed by them.

The hermits, who may once have inhabited the place, have left no successors. A lonely monk from the convent may occasionally be seen clambering over the rocks; but otherwise the solitude is seldom disturbed by the presence of a human being.

The ascent to the convent, from the entrance of the ravine, is partly up a flight of steps rudely constructed of loose stones, and partly by a narrow pathway cut in the rock. We were, therefore, obliged to dismount, and to leave our horses in a cavern at the foot of the mountain.

* According to St. Jerome, El Kosh or El Kosha, the birth-place of the prophet, was a village in Galilee; and his tomb was shown at Bethogabra near Emmaus. As his prophecies were written after the captivity of the ten tribes, and apply exclusively to Nineveh, the tradition which points to the village in Assyria as the place of his death, is not without weight.