Their languages are unclassified. There are two of them, neither of which ever was put into writing except within the last generation, so that the spoken tongues of those professing to speak the same language greatly differ in different parts of the country. Their speech is rough, like the life they live, and resembles in no small degree the barren cliffs amid which they dwell. Some years ago Sultan Hamid II conceived the idea of subduing the Koords in the eastern part of his dominions by calling the chiefs to Constantinople and making them each commander of a body of their own people, giving this troop his own name as a special honor. The chiefs were to provide the men and the horses and the sultan furnished the equipment. The proposition was most acceptable to the Koordish nobles, for it provided them with modern equipments of warfare and at the same time stamped their acts, even of depredation, with official authority. Under the new dispensation, whoever offered resistance to a Koord armed with a government rifle, by that very act put himself into open rebellion against the government. These conditions prevail at the present time in the Erzerum, Bitlis, Diarbekr and Van vilayets along the Russian frontier. Much of the trouble of the last fifteen years in these regions is due to this fact. Were it not that the Koords are urged by the government to take aggressive measures against the resident Christian population, conditions there would be better than they are at the present time. It is often stated that all Koords are Mohammedans. The Turks take this ground, as they do regarding the Albanians of Macedonia. The fact is that few of the Koords are good Moslems. They do not hesitate to put out of the way a Turkish tax-collector who makes himself obnoxious. The fact that he is a brother Moslem interposes no obstacle. Many of them observe few of the rites and customs of Islam, and one tribe, at least, living along the upper waters of the Euphrates openly declares that it is not Mohammedan. The writer, in conversation with a leading man of that tribe, said, “You are a Mohammedan.” With great indignation he spat into the air, and, beating upon his breast, he said, “I am a Koord; Moslems are dogs.” They have certain religious rites which greatly resemble some of the Christian customs, as, for instance, they have a service in which bread dipped in wine is put into the mouths of the kneeling participants by their religious leader. These people often tell the Armenian Christians that their sympathy is with them rather than with the Turks.