One case of this second-sight, or vision, concerned the writer himself when making a late autumn visit to Qudshanis from Van in 1907, in company with the late Bishop Collins of Gibraltar. We were expected at the place; but terribly bad weather made them not only give up hope of our arrival, but even hold special services of prayer for our safe return to Van. Under these circumstances, a certain deacon of Tkhuma, Nwiya[137] by name, who was servant to the Rev. W. H. Browne, came rushing in to his master early one morning in great excitement. "They are coming, Rabbi; they are coming after all. I saw them in a vision by night, and they will be here this day. But I saw them coming up the valley, not down it as Mr. Wigram said he would come. The bishop was wearing a black hat, and Mr. Wigram a white one." Three hours later, the _avant-courier_ we had sent before us actually arrived; and in the course of the day the party reached Qudshanis by the route named by the deacon (which had been adopted when the more direct route proved impassable), the bishop wearing an astrakhan fur cap, and the writer a sun-helmet. Any suspicion of confederacy may be ruled out of the question without hesitation, for it was a physical impossibility; and clairvoyance, or some form of thought transference, seems to be the most natural explanation of so strange a coincidence of foreword and fact. Every nation has, of course, its own superstitions about the mystery of birth, as exemplified in the case of our own ancestors by the belief in "the changeling." In the case of these Nestorians, the danger that menaces the new-born is a sort of fearful night-hag, called the _khwarha_, that carries off and destroys the child. To guard against her visits, the child must be watched day and night for the first days of its life (baptism is usually administered on the eighth day), while an onion and a wool-comb must be kept in the same room. The smell of the former makes the spirit sneeze and deprives her of power; while the latter (which is of iron and so exercises a protective influence of itself) entangles her long locks, so that she flees in terror.[138] An old man in the household of the Patriarch tells how he was once set to take his turn at watching a certain important infant, and was so far negligent that he went out of the room to smoke a cigarette. As he did so, he saw the terrible _khwarha_ approach, change herself into the form of an ibex with very long horns (deponent sayeth not what was her appearance previously, which is a pity), and dash into the room. Of course the conscience-stricken watcher dashed in after her; but to his huge relief found his charge sleeping quietly (a happy effect due no doubt to the protective influence of the comb and the onion), so all ended well. Still that moment is a remembrance of horror to that old man to this day.