The following day, they had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Riach, physician of the embassy, whom they had seen at Constantinople, and who had come, with a Russian travelling passport, determined to cross the frontier, if necessary, and remain with them until their liberation. The medical skill of Dr. Riach did much to aid Mrs. Perkins in completing the journey to Tabriz, where they arrived on the 23d of August, seventy-four days after their departure from Trebizond. Three days after, Mrs. Perkins became the mother of a daughter, of whose existence she was unconscious for several days. Her life was probably saved, under God, through the combined skill and kind attentions of three English physicians, who were then providentially at Tabriz. The Ambassador was exceedingly kind; so were Mr. and Mrs. Nesbit, who have been already introduced to the reader. Dr. Riach, afterwards at the head of the embassy, stayed five days and nights with Mrs. Perkins, not retiring from the house till he saw some hope of her recovery. "The treatment we received from them on our first arrival," writes the missionary nine years after, "is but a specimen of their kindness to us from that period to the present." The field about to be occupied was of limited extent. The Nestorians numbered not more than one hundred and fifty thousand souls. Their territory extended from Lake Oroomiah three hundred miles westward to the Tigris, and two hundred miles from north to south, embracing some most rugged mountain ranges, and several very beautiful and fertile plains, the largest of which formed the district of Oroomiah. Education was then at the lowest ebb among the people, hardly a score of men being intelligent readers, while only one woman, the sister of Mar. Shimon, was able to read at all. They had no printed books, and but very few manuscripts of even portions of the Bible, and these were in the ancient Syriac, which was an unknown tongue to almost all of them. Their spoken language was an unwritten dialect of the Syriac. Still deeper was their moral degradation, almost every command of the decalogue being transgressed without compunction, or even shame when detected. Yet they were entirely accessible to the Protestant missionary, and were more Scriptural in their doctrines and ritual, with far less of bigotry, than any other Oriental sect; so much so, indeed, that the Nestorians were sometimes called the "Protestants of Asia." Mr. Perkins wisely determined upon acquiring a knowledge of the Syriac before going to reside among them. To obtain a teacher, he visited Oroomiah in October, accompanied by the Rev. Mr. Haas, of the Basle Missionary Society, then residing at Tabriz. The manner in which he was everywhere received by the Nestorians was exceedingly encouraging, and he obtained the services of Mar Yohannan, one of their most intelligent bishops, as a teacher, who brought with him a young priest, scarcely less promising than the bishop himself.