According to English gazetteers, Urumiyah is a walled town, and contains upwards of 20,000 inhabitants, of whom about 10,000 are Nestorians, 2000 Jews, and the rest Mohammedans. It claims to be the birthplace of Zoroaster, and in the vicinity are several mounds supposed to be the hills of the ancient fire-worshippers. The Nestorians derive their name from Nestorius, a heretic of the fifth century, who taught that Christ was divided into two persons. Nestorius acquired so much distinction by his learning, pulpit eloquence, and purity of life, that, in 428, he was elevated to the patriarchate of Constantinople. But fourteen centuries had wrought terrible degradation in Persia. There was little of Christianity, except the name, when the American Board of Commissioners established a mission and educational agency in 1834. The language of the Nestorians contained no words corresponding to home and wife, the nearest approach to them being house and woman. To a person of refinement and delicacy, like Miss Fiske, it must have been shocking to see women treated by men as drudges and slaves: wives beaten often and severely by their husband; yea, a whole village of these coarse and passionate creatures engaged in a quarrel among themselves, their hair all loose and flying in the wind. Miss Fiske’s chief solicitudes were given to the educational agency. By great tact she effected considerable reformation in the schools, and corrected the prevalent habits of lying and stealing among her pupils. She also found time to visit the Nestorian women, to pray with them, and read the Scriptures. In 1844, her labours and plans were suddenly interrupted by a storm of persecution which burst upon the mission. When the missionaries had most reason to fear expulsion, Miss Fiske thus wrote:—“I knew not before that my affections had become so closely entwined around this poor people, nor how severely I should feel a removal from them.” In the providence of God their enemies were thwarted; and they were permitted to remain and go on with their work, though not without great opposition. Towards the end of the year, Miss Fiske resumed her duties. How hard she laboured; with what holy fire her bosom burned; how earnestly she longed for a brighter day to dawn on the wretched Persian women; with what success she enforced upon mothers as well as pupils their relative duties; how brilliantly she illustrated the text, “Dying, and behold we live; unknown, and yet well known; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, yet possessing all things”! In 1849, the first public examination of the school was held, and about two hundred guests listened with unabated interest to the exercises till the sun went down. The pupils were examined in ancient and modern Syriac, Bible history, geography, and natural philosophy. The following year opened upon them in a new, large, and convenient building. In the autumn of 1856, the Persian government again tried to break up the educational agency.