"The Yezidees, like the Druses of Mount Lebanon, are very reluctant to discuss their religion, and it is said that death is the penalty for any one among them who reveals the truth concerning what they worship. "On paying a visit to their sacred shrine (Sheikh Adi), I found it hidden in the hollow of thickly-wooded mountains, and composed of two large compounds, the inner compound containing the shrine in a church-like building with a newly-built steeple. On the right side of the entrance porch is the figure of a huge serpent graven in the stone of the building, with its head uppermost. This serpent is kept blackened daily with charcoal by the two or three old monks who live in the shrine. Upon inquiring the meaning of this symbol, the monk told me it was graven there to remind the worshippers to remove their sandals from off their feet, as the ground around the shrine is holy. If any should be careless or wicked enough to disobey, it was said that they would be bitten on the heels by some of the snakes that were said to infest the place. "The steeple rises immediately from the room in the church that once contained the body of their founder, Sheikh Adi. This sheikh was a great Mohammedan teacher who many centuries ago used to preach and teach in Damascus. He gathered around him many disciples, and it is said he was accustomed to vary the monotony of his teaching by drawing a circle on the ground, and, placing therein himself and some favourite disciple, would enable the latter to hear and understand the teaching of another famous mullah speaking in far-away Baghdad. "This Sheikh Adi some years before his death retired to this place in the mountains, two days' journey from Mosul, and there he was visited by many, as his fame spread abroad, and in this place he died and was buried. The Yezidees claim that, ere he died, he forsook Mohammedanism and instituted a new religion. The Moslems, however, reverence his memory, and say that the Yezidees, after his death, started a new religion of their own. "In the church there was to be seen a pool of water, said by them to be used as a baptistery, and little else but bare walls. My guide assured me it used to look very different, but fifteen years previously the Turks had captured the place and destroyed all they could lay hands on. On the roof near the steeple are two stones, facing east and west, said to be used as prayer-stones, the Yezidees praying as the first ray of the rising sun appears, and as the last ray of the setting sun departs, and use these stones as indicators. This, again, is interesting, as (according to Dr. Tisdall) it is a curious fact that Mohammedan tradition avers that it is alone at these two times daily that the devil has power to intercept the prayers of the faithful, and they are, therefore, to be scrupulously avoided by all true Moslems.