Priest Dunka, from one of the independent tribes, gave indications of piety. He had learned the alphabet in his childhood, while tending his father's flocks on the mountains, and became a reader without farther instruction. At Oroomiah he was now both a learner and helper. Three months of the summer he spent among his native mountains, preaching the Gospel in the villages around his home. Little of the truth had been heard there for ages, except in the unknown language of the liturgy, but the people were eager to listen. In September, Robert Glen, son of the Rev. William Glen of Tabriz, was hopefully converted while at Oroomiah on a visit. He was born at Astrakhan, where his father labored seventeen years as a missionary, and was now employed as a teacher in a small school of Moslem young men. The mission at this time had twelve schools in as many villages, containing two hundred and seventy-two males, with twenty-two females; and seventeen pupils in the female boarding-school, and fifty-five in the seminary, which was taught by a priest and deacon, under the supervision of Mr. Stocking. The scarcity of copies of the Holy Scriptures among the Nestorian people would be remarkable, in view of their receiving them as their rule of faith and practice, if we did not remember how sorely they had been persecuted in the past, and how much they still suffered from Moslem oppression. Excepting the Psalms, which entered largely into the prescribed form of worship, they had but one copy of the Old Testament, and that was in a number of volumes, the property of several individuals. The British and Foreign Bible Society had printed the Gospels in the Nestorian character; but they had scarcely more than a single copy of the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, and none of the Book of Revelation, in their own character. Of course all was in the ancient language. Dr. Grant had been suffering for some time before the death of his wife, from the climate of the plain; and he was now instructed by his Committee to commence a station, if possible, among the Nestorians on the western side of the Koordish mountains. Incapable of fear, he had vainly sought the consent of his brethren to penetrate the mountains directly from the plain. It was the belief of the Committee that, with his medical skill and his courage and address, he could do this with safety; but the brethren of the mission had been so impressed by the murder of Mr. Schultz, on that route, that they could not consent; and the opinions of brethren on the ground were not to be disregarded. He was, however, authorized to enter the mountains from the west, in the belief that, once established there, he would soon find his way opened on every side.