[31] Lest this statement seem unwarrantable, I beg to support it by the opinion of the Chaldeans themselves. They are in most cases fully aware of the circumstances under which their forbears--and contemporaries--became absorbed into the Roman Catholic Church, and there are very few of them whom I ever heard express any sentiment upon the matter save deep regret, the more so that they know now that it was possible to have the much-prized education the Roman Catholics supply without a disintegration of their Church, for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s mission has taught them that. [32] “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of the house of God, and he carried them into the land of Shinar.”--Daniel i. 1–2. [33] A little editing was unavoidable here, the shaikh’s words being, “Wa bir parcha pukh qaldi, va san sin.” CHAPTER VII CHALDEANS The course of our narrative will take us on into Kurdistan, and among peoples different to those we have met in our journeyings from the Mediterranean and the eastern border of Mesopotamia. We have had occasion to notice various races and peoples in passing, but of all these, those who have by their high antiquity of descent the premier claim to description are the Chaldeans, to whom up to the present we have not given more than casual notice. As we are about to pass out of the land of their ancestors, into the hills and mountains of the semi-independent Kurds, this opportunity for adequate remark upon the interesting Chaldean race cannot be passed. The traveller of to-day, once he passes Urfa to go east, meets, besides Armenians and Christians of Greek descent, large numbers of the non-Muhammadan population who, in various places, go under a variety of names--Nestorians, Nasara, Kaldani, Jacobites, Catholics, New Chaldeans, Inglisi, Amrikani, and Protestan--the last three in north-west Persia. These varied sects are all branches of the Chaldean and Assyrian race, lineal descendants of the two nations that occupied the Tigris valley as far from the mouth as Jaziri ibn Umar; and the lower Euphrates valley, or Babylonia. It is now 2500 years since the Assyrian nation broke up, and but a little less since the second Chaldean period was brought to an end by Alexander the Great; and since then, the Assyrians or Chaldeans (for they were the same race) have been in subjection to alien rulers, though the powerful and tenacious nature of the Chaldeans has won for them a premier place in the civil life of all ages, and is to-day the means of furnishing a great part of western Asia with a class of merchants and villagers on a far higher scale of civilisation and culture than the peoples among whom they live. [Sidenote: THE NATIVE CHRISTIAN]