This people inhabit, along with Koords and other races, the territory extending from the western shore of the Lake of Oroomiah to the eastern bank of the Tigris. It includes the Persian province of Oroomiah, and both the eastern and western slope of Central Koordistan. The most inaccessible recesses of the Koordish Mountains have been their refuge for centuries. The whole region extends across four degrees of longitude, with a varying breadth of from one to two degrees of latitude. Attention will be called especially to the city of Oroomiah and the villages around it. The plain of that name is seventy-five miles long and from twelve to twenty miles in width, containing more than a thousand square miles. It is dotted with perhaps three hundred villages, the population varying, according to the size of the village, from less than one hundred to more than a thousand inhabitants. The frontispiece gives a view of this plain, from the roof of the mission premises at Seir, one thousand feet above the city. The lofty Wolf mountain appears on the right, and the high range west of the narrowest part of the lake on the left. The lake itself is seen beyond the plain at the foot of the mountains which rise abruptly from its eastern shore. The distance makes it seem much narrower than it is, for while one hundred miles in length, it is not far from thirty miles in breadth. Its surface is forty-one hundred feet above the sea, and four hundred feet below the city of Oroomiah. No living thing exists in its waters, which are both salt and bituminous. The plain is more crowded with villages than here represented, and each one is made conspicuous by its grove of trees, as well as its houses. The city appears prominent at the foot of the hill, though six miles distant from the spectator. It is in the same latitude with Richmond, Virginia, and contains about thirty-five thousand souls. The plain slopes up very gradually from the lake, and Mount Seir rises, behind our point of view, two thousand eight hundred and thirty-four feet above the city. Farther west, the summits of Central Koordistan rise, range above range, to the height of seventeen thousand feet. We pass down from Seir to the city by a carriage road, now by the side of vineyards, and now near fields of wheat and clover, diversified by orchards and gardens of cucumbers. All of these, and indeed the whole plain, owes its fertility to canals, led out from the rivers which descend from the mountains. Willow, poplar, and sycamore trees line these watercourses. All kinds of fruit trees abound, while the rich verdure of the plain contrasts strikingly with the bare declivities that overlook it from every side. The villages on either hand are clusters of mud houses crowded together for greater security, and every tree in their groves has to be watered as regularly as the fields and gardens.