Accompanying these was the following to Dr. Perkins, dated October 3d, 1851:—
"To you, O my spiritual father, Mr. Perkins, I presume to send two letters, for friends in Middlebury. If you please, you will translate them, and send them; but I fear that they will give you much trouble.
"Again, you wrote me in your letter, that I should teach children to read. Now, I am very needy myself of instruction. Yet I desire that that might be my employment. But that is a very difficult matter among such a people, of whom you have heard that although there may be here and there one who would walk in this way, yet there is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence therein; so that every one that goeth in it, his foot stumbleth, and quickly he turns back.
"Again, O friend beloved, though I am unworthy to call you such, yet I beseech you that you remember me always in your prayers. I know that you do remember me, but I desire that you remember me more, for I greatly fear for my perishing soul. Greatly do I desire to see you once more in this world, if the Lord will."
He who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working, commissioned these praying souls to prepare his way in the mountains, even as he chose those other three to show forth his grace in death; and they who live to mark the future course of the river of life in those rocky glens will find, we trust, that his strength was made perfect in their weakness.
CHAPTER XVIII.
LABORERS IN THE MOUNTAINS.
LETTER OF BADAL.—ACCOUNT OF HANNAH.—THE PIT.—'LETTER OF GULY AND YOHANAN.—ACCOUNT OF SARAH.—LETTERS OF OSHANA.—LETTERS AND JOURNAL OF SARAH.—LETTER FKOM AMADIA.—CONFERENCE OF NATIVE HELPERS.
Besides these, the Seminary has sent up other laborers into the same field. At the monthly concert in Oroomiah, June, 1858, there were present four graduates, with their husbands, either going there for the first time, or returning to resume their labors. Guly, the wife of Yohanan, who had already spent one year in little Jeloo, was now about to return there with her husband. Nargis, the wife of Khamis, who had spent the winter laboring alone in the vicinity of Amadia, on the Turkish side of the mountains, was now with him, going back to Gawar. Hannah, the wife of Badal, who had sent her husband, three days after marriage, to his winter's campaign in the same region, was now accompanying him to the chosen field of his labors; and Eneya, the wife of Shlemon, his associate, was also expecting to leave in a few days.
By the way of introducing the reader to one of these laborers, we subjoin a letter from Badal to Miss Fiske, dated December 12th, 1859. It is a good specimen of Oriental style.