Dr. Perkins lived through the entire connection of the mission with the American Board, and died at Chicopee, Massachusetts, on the 31st of December, 1869, when he had nearly attained the age of sixty-five; having been born on the 12th of March, 1805. He graduated at Amherst College in 1829, taught the next year in Amherst Academy; spent the two following years in Andover Seminary; and was tutor in his Alma Mater for the greater part of another year. The engagement last named was shortened by his call to commence the mission among the Nestorians. His life, from the time of his sailing from Boston, with Mrs. Perkins, in September, 1833, for six-and-thirty years, is largely the history of the Nestorian mission. The careful reader of this history will not need a portraiture of his character. He was evidently made for the position he so long occupied. He was an acknowledged leader in the Lord's host; a Moses and a Joshua, with traits of character resembling those both of Elijah, and of the Apostle Paul. To idleness, vagrancy, and drunkenness, besetting sins of the Nestorians, he was the old prophet; and in his longing desire to make them savingly acquainted with the gospel, he was the apostle. Their spoken language he reduced to a written form, and gave them, in their vernacular, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; with a commentary on Genesis and on Daniel. Is it too much to pronounce him the Apostle to the Nestorians? He came to his end as a shock of corn fully ripe; and glorious results of his self denying, and in some respects suffering mission, he will assuredly behold in the heavenly world. Where in his native land could he have labored, with the prospect of so large a spiritual harvest, taking no account of the widely reacting influence of his labors on the churches at home? And we might propose the same inquiry with respect to the departed Stoddard, and Rhea, and Grant, and Fidelia Fiske, and others, both among the dead, and the living. CHAPTER XXXVIII. SYRIA. 1857-1860. Dr. Eli Smith, whose name has an honorable place among the translators of the Scriptures, died at Beirut, Sabbath morning, January 11th, 1857.[1] Thirty years had elapsed since his first arrival in Syria, and he had before been connected for several months with the press at Malta. In 1829, he made an exploring visit, with the author, to the Ionian Islands, the Morea, and the Grecian Archipelago; and the next year, he and Dr. Dwight explored Armenia, and a part of the Nestorian country. The other more important events of his life are so far known to the reader, that they need not be repeated.