It is doubtful perhaps whether, had he still been in power, he would have been able to resist the pressure put upon him by the _Hukumet_ (and by his own tribesmen) to play his part in an official _Jehad_. After all he was a Moslem, and a Turkish vassal, and a consistent contemner of Russians, so wherefore should he stand aside? But he might have proved a chivalrous, albeit a formidable, enemy, and his influence might have alleviated some of the vindictiveness of the campaign. For this second assault was successful. It was from the southern side that the Christian valleys were most assailable; and Tkhuma, Baz, Jilu, and Tyari were ravaged from end to end. The churches and houses were burned, the fields wasted, the trees cut down, the irrigation channels demolished; and the valleys were thus rendered practically uninhabitable for years. It was in this devastation that the famous church of Mar Zeia in Jilu[160] was plundered for the first time in its history--maugre that notable talisman that had always preserved it previously, the Charter of Protection granted to it (as believed) by Mohammed himself. But its fate was not quite unavenged. A fierce young Kurdish chieftain, the eldest son of Simco Agha of the Shekak Kurds, was the leader of the spoilers; and he (like Fanatic Brooke) had boasted that he would not rest till he had seen the ruin of every Christian church in the land. As he now stood at the door, watching the destruction of that wonderful and weird collection of age-old votive offerings, a bullet fired at extreme range took him in the head, and he dropped dead on the desecrated threshold. But though beaten out of their valleys, the Assyrians were not yet done with. They now took refuge on their _Yailas_--the upland pastures on the laps of the mountains, 10,000 feet above sea-level--whither they had always been accustomed to drive their flocks and herds in summer, and where a considerable part of the nation used generally to remain encamped as long as the cattle were there. It was summer still, and the cattle had been driven there as usual: the _Yailas_ were, therefore, already well provisioned, and there is always water from the melting snows. These strongholds are only approachable by a few precipitous pathways, and the Kurdish attempts to penetrate to them were everywhere easily repulsed. Raiding parties of Assyrians were even able to sally down from them into the valleys, and carry back small supplies of corn from the hidden granaries in the villages. Lack of salt was the chief privation that the bulk of the people suffered during their sojourn here, but salt is wellnigh a necessity to an Oriental; and their Patriarch, who (as a _Rabban_) was prohibited by his vows from eating flesh meat, was obliged to live almost entirely upon milk and parched corn.