Mr. Labaree communicates the result of careful inquiries by Mr. Thompson, of the British Legation, who had been spending some time at Oroomiah. Mr. Thompson estimated the Nestorians in Oroomiah, Tergawer, Sooldooz, and Salmas, at twenty thousand; the Armenians in Oroomiah alone at about two thousand eight hundred; the Papal Chaldeans in Oroomiah, Tergawer, and Sooldooz at six hundred and twenty-five; but the Chaldean and Armenian population of Salmas he did not learn. He thought that the population of Persia could not be more than from five to seven millions, and his opinion was deemed of great weight, as he had made himself familiar with the civil and political affairs of Persia during a long residence, and had travelled extensively through the country, with a very observant eye. Among the new lights breaking forth in Western and Central Asia, was a community of evangelical Armenians in the Russian province of Sherwan, near the Caspian Sea. A Nestorian brother had been sent to inquire into their condition early in 1862, and there had been occasional intercourse ever since; but cautiously, lest their cause should be jeoparded. They had suffered sore persecution, and had met in glens and deep recesses of the mountains, for the worship of God and the study of his Word. Their leader, Varpet Sarkis, had been exiled, their children left unbaptized, their young people unmarried, their dead denied the right of burial, and they the privilege of commemorating the death of their Lord. In August, 1866, an Imperial Ukase was brought them by a Lutheran clergyman from Moscow, granting them full liberty to worship God publicly as their consciences should dictate, and restoring to them all their privileges. Pious Nestorians, who had gone there from Oroomiah, reported that the Lutheran clergyman remained there a week, organized a church, received a hundred and six persons to Christian fellowship, and performed the necessary baptisms and marriages; and that they were expecting the return of their beloved guide and teacher from exile. Nearly two thousand copies of the Scriptures were sold among this people within three and a half years, besides many other good books and tracts.