On the first of April, 1839, Dr. Grant left Oroomiah, expecting to meet Mr. Homes at Erzroom, who had been appointed to accompany him. An unusually late fall of snow made the journey perilous. For more than two hundred miles, it was from two to four feet deep; and for twenty miles, in the mountains beyond Ararat, there was not a single human habitation. In descending, the only way he could know when he was out of the path, was by the depth to which he sank in the snow. In the pass of Dahar, near the sources of the Euphrates, where Messrs. Smith and Dwight had well-nigh perished, the guide lost the path in a snow-storm, and declared it impossible to go on. The snow was too deep for the horses. Turning back was out of the question, as their tracks were obliterated by the wind, which would then be in their faces. Though benumbed and feeble, the courage of Dr. Grant did not fail. He could not tell how deliverance would come, but had a sweet assurance that God would send it, and encouraged his companions to new effort. Just then four mountaineers came tramping over the snow before them, and one of them consenting to turn back, they passed safely on foot, the man breaking down the drifts for the horses, and exploring the path by thrusting his long staff deep into the snow. He reached Erzroom on the seventeenth, and rested with his kind friend Dr. Riach, who had retired from Teheran, because of impending war between England and Persia. Dr. Grant's health had improved amid all his hardships.
Learning that Mr. Homes was detained at Constantinople, he started for Trebizond on the eighteenth, with no attendant except the surijee from the post-house, and there took a steamer for Constantinople. Mr. Homes not being yet able to accompany him, he returned alone to Erzroom, and proceeded thence to Diarbekir, where he arrived May 30. 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. The people ascribed their defeat to Frank innovations in military tactics; and when Mr. Homes arrived, the brethren not only heard curses against themselves in the streets, but an openly expressed purpose to kill every European in the place. The thermometer was then 98 in the shade, and their danger from both climate and people induced them to leave for Mardin, which they did with an escort of thirty horsemen. Such was their personal danger even at Mardin, only a few days after their arrival, that the governor offered them a guard. This they declined, not thinking it best to manifest any alarm, and the excitement soon apparently died away. But, two months later, a mob killed the governor in his palace in open day, and also several leading men, and then sought the lodgings of the missionaries, intending to kill them. Providentially they had ridden out farther than usual that morning, in a vain search for a caravan, and before their return, the Koords had shut the gates, to prevent the entrance of government troops. That saved the lives of our brethren, who retired to the convent of the Syrian Patriarch, a few miles distant, which their enemies did not dare to attack.
In the midst of so much peril, and with so little hope of usefulness, Mr. Homes, by the advice of brethren at Constantinople and Smyrna, resolved to return, and Dr. Grant did not withhold his consent. "Within the ruined walls of an ancient church," he writes, "in a lonely ravine, overlooked by the town, I exchanged the parting embrace with my brother and companion in tribulation. On account of the anarchy around us, we had travelled together barely two days, but on a bed of sickness, and surrounded by men of blood, I had learned to prize the company of a Christian friend. Yet, while Providence called him back to Constantinople, to me it seemed to cry, 'Onward to the mountains!'"
Dr. Grant resolved to go to Mosul. Disguised in an Oriental dress, he returned to Mardin to prepare for his journey, and while there, his safety was insured by the surrender of the town to the Pasha of Mosul. On his way, he was favored with the company of Captain Conolly, the bearer of despatches for India, whose sad fate on the banks of the Oxus afterwards occasioned the journey of Dr. Wolff to Bokhara. The distance was nearly two hundred miles, and they arrived at Mosul on the 20th of September.
Fully resolved to penetrate the fastnesses of Koordistan, and trusting in the protecting power of his gracious Lord, Dr. Grant left Mosul on the 7th of October, with two Nestorians from Persia, a Koordish muleteer, and a kavass from the Pasha. Crossing the bridge of twenty-one boats, which spans the Tigris, he was amid the ruins of Nineveh, and soon reached a Yezidee village, where he was hospitably received. On the 15th, as he approached Duree, near the borders of Tiary, deep Syriac gutturals from stentorian voices in the rocks above him demanded who he was, where he was going, and what he wanted. Had he been a Papist, he would have been robbed; as it was, the frightened kavass lost all courage, and begged permission to return.
When the people heard him speak their own language, they gathered around, and welcomed him to their mountain home. His fame as a physician had preceded him, and they came for medicine from all directions. The venerable bishop, with a long white beard, took him into their ancient church, which was a cave high up on the mountain side, with heavy masonry in front, and dark within. Here the bishop slept, to be in readiness for early morning prayers, and he was pleased with the gift of a box of matches to light his lamp.
A loftier range still separated Dr. Grant from Tiary, the "munition of rocks," which he describes as "an amphitheatre of mountains broken with dark, deep defiles and narrow glens, that for ages had been the secure abodes of this branch of the Christian Church." He had been warned at Mosul, not to enter this region without an escort from the Patriarch. But he could not afford the delay, and as the bishop encouraged him, he resolved to go alone. Exchanging his Turkish boots for the bishop's sandals, made of hair, to avoid a fatal slip on the smooth, narrow ledges of the mountain, he set off early on the 18th. An hour and a half brought him to the summit. Retiring to a sequestered corner, where he could feast his eyes with the prospect, his thoughts went back to the period when the Nestorians traversed Asia, and, for more than a thousand years, preached the Gospel in Tartary, Mongolia, and China. Though the flame of vital piety was almost quenched on their altars, his faith anticipated the day when those glens would reëcho the glad praises of God; and down he sped, over cliffs and slippery ledges, to the large village of Lezan, on the banks of the noisy Zab. Scarcely had he entered it, when a young man, the only one he had ever seen from this remote region, from whose eyes he had removed a cataract a year before, came with a present of honey, and introduced him at once to the confidence of the people. He became so thronged with the sick from all the region, that he had to forbid more than three or four coming forward at once.
Leaving Lezan, he went up to Ashita, where he became the guest of a priest, reported to be the most learned of living Nestorians, who had spent twenty years in copying, in beautiful style, the few works of Nestorian literature; but even he had not an entire Bible. He was electrified by Dr. Grant's account of the press, that could do his twenty years' work in a less number of hours. At Kerme, where he arrived on the twenty-fifth, almost exhausted by a walk of ten long hours, he was soon recognized and welcomed by a Nestorian, who had received medical aid from him two years before at Oroomiah. Starting the next morning for the Patriarch's residence, he forded a river on horseback, that was fifty or sixty yards across. He was now on the caravan road from Salmas to Julamerk. In the more precipitous places, the rock had been cut away and regular steps chiseled out. He was received by the Patriarch with great cordiality, without the extravagant compliments so common with the Persians. "And now," said the Patriarch, "you will make my house your own, and regard me as your older brother." Mar Shimon was thirty-eight years old, above the middle stature, well-proportioned, with a pleasant, expressive, and rather intelligent countenance; and his large flowing robes, his Koordish turban, and his long gray beard, gave him a patriarchal and venerable appearance, that was heightened by a uniformly dignified demeanor. But for the fire in his eye and his activity, he would have been thought nearer fifty than thirty-eight. Being the temporal as well as spiritual head of his people, the difficulties of his situation were assigned as the cause of his hoary hair and beard.
During the five weeks spent in the patriarchal mansion, Dr. Grant had an opportunity to see Nestorians of intelligence and influence from all parts of the mountains, and elicited from them information such as he could not have gained in any other way. At parting, the Patriarch presented him one of the ancient manuscripts of his library. It was the New Testament, written on parchment, in the old Estrangelo character, seven hundred and forty years before. It was presented by Dr. Grant to the library of the American Board, and is now there.
His next sojourn was in the castle of Nûrûllah Bey, chief of the independent Hakary Koords, two days from the residence of the Patriarch. The Bey was very sick; and becoming impatient under the slow operation of the medicine given him by the doctor, he sent a messenger for him at midnight. "The sentinels upon the ramparts," says Dr. Grant, "were sounding the watch-cry in the rough tones of their native Koordish. We entered the outer court through wide, iron-cased folding-doors. A second iron door opened into a long dark alley, which conducted to the room where the chief was lying. It was evident that he was becoming impatient; and as I looked upon the swords, pistols, guns, spears, and daggers—the ordinary furniture of a Koordish castle—which hung around the walls of the room, I could not but think of the fate of the unfortunate Schultz, who had fallen, as it is said, by the orders of this sanguinary chief. He had the power of life and death in his hands. I knew I was entirely at his mercy; but I felt that I was under the guardian care of One, who had the hearts of kings in His keeping."