Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/243

Rh complaints against him, the Porte sent him a severe reproof for his intrigues in Coordistan, and ordered him to abstain in future from meddling with the affairs of other pashalics.

I have now brought down the account of the different external influences which were in active operation to compass the downfall of the Nestorians up to the period of our arrival at Mosul, and I can confidently say that the authority upon which the foregoing statements rest is indisputable. Of the internal political condition of the mountain tribes, little was known with any degree of certainty at that time, and I shall reserve for the present what I afterwards learned of the causes springing therefrom which conspired with those already adduced to bring about the massacre of the unfortunate Nestorians. That the country was in a very disturbed state owing to the dissensions which existed betwixt the Coords and Nestorians is clear from the separate testimony of Mons. Boré and Mr. Ainsworth, and their statements alone, made several years before my visit to the Tyari, are sufficient to belie the malicious slanders which were so freely circulated respecting our mission. A correspondent of one of the London daily newspapers, in giving an account of the slaughter of the Nestorians, made me in conjunction with the American and Romish missionaries the immediate cause of this outrage. Who his informant was is not stated, neither on what grounds the accusation was made, but there is every reason to believe that the author of the libel was an enemy to the Church and to religion generally. The following extracts go indeed to show that the Coords were becoming jealous of the frequent visits made by Franks to the mountain Nestorians; but I shall hereafter be able to prove beyond all doubt, that this circumstance had really very little influence in hastening a crisis which had long before been planned and anticipated. Unsettled feuds of long standing were still rife and open betwixt the Coords and Christians of central Coordistan, and the growing power of the former, fostered as it now was by the countenance and support of the bigoted Emeer of Buhtân, made them more and more