Asahel Grant, M. D., and wife, left Trebizond for Persia September 17, 1835, accompanied by Rev. James L. Merrick, who was to commence a mission to the Mohammedans of Persia. Mr. Perkins met them at Erzroom, to assist on their journey through the inhospitable region of the Koords. The province called Oroomiah is situated in the northwestern part of modern Persia. It is the northwestern part of ancient Media. A beautiful lake, eighty miles long and thirty broad, and four thousand feet above the level of the sea, is its boundary on the east, and a chain of snow-covered mountains bounds it on the west. The water of the lake is so salt and bituminous that fish cannot live in it, while its shores are enlivened by numerous water-fowl, of which the beautiful flamingo is most conspicuous.1 The plain contains about three hundred villages and hamlets, and is covered with fields, gardens, and vineyards, which are irrigated by streams from the mountains. The landscape is one of the most lovely in the East, and its effect is heightened by its contrast with the adjacent heights, on which not a solitary tree is to be seen. Along the water-courses are willows, poplars, and sycamores; and the peach, apricot, pear, plum, and other fruits impart to large sections the appearance of a forest. Near the centre of the plain, four hundred feet above the lake, stands the city of Oroomiah. It dates from a remote antiquity, and claims to be the birthplace of Zoroaster. It is built chiefly of unburnt brick, is surrounded by a high mud wall and a ditch, and has a population of twenty-five thousand, of whom the larger part are Mohammedans. The Nestorians of the plain were estimated at twenty thousand. 1 An analysis of the water of the lake is said to have proved it to be highly charged with sulphureted hydrogen. Dr. Grant left Tabriz six days in advance of his associates, to prepare for their coming. But so tardy had been the carpenters, that Mr. Perkins and the ladies found things in a very sorry condition. It was late in November, and after facing a driving rain all day, they had to content themselves with unfinished and unfurnished rooms; and as the muleteers did not arrive with their baggage, they had neither bedding, nor a change of clothing. But they had a blazing fire, and provisions from the market, with a sharpened appetite, and slept comfortably on piles of shavings, covered with the clothes they had dried by the fire.