Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/269

Rh Nestorians extract a generous wine, and a thick juice resembling honey, and which when dried make excellent raisins. Wood is scarce about Asheetha, but further north the hills are covered with dwarf oak and other trees, and the valleys are lined with poplars. The chief employment of the people, beside the cultivation of the soil, is the care of their flocks, from which they derive their main support. Their butter they barter with the people of Berwari, and not unfrequently travelling merchants go from Mosul to purchase this commodity from them, and also honey which they have in abundance. In some parts of the Tyari large quantities of the gall-nut are gathered every year, and this also forms an important article of the mountain trade.

The Tyari produces neither flax nor cotton; these the villagers generally import from Julamerk or Amedia in exchange for their home-raised commodities. The wool of their sheep, however, affords employment to the females who work it into stuff's of different colours, figured socks, &c.; yet this does not prevent large quantities of a crimson and grey-striped woollen cloth, of which the dress of the mountaineers is chiefly made, from being imported from Garamoon, a Nestorian village to the west of Asheetha.

The male costume of the Nestorians consists of a wide pair of shalwar, or trowsers, bound round the waist by a running string, or fastened with a girdle, which also secures the end of a vest. Under these is a white cotton shirt, and above a coarse woollen coat, striped with white and black, and reaching to the loins. A conical felt cap, resembling in shape that worn by the Chinese, forms the common head-dress. Priests, however, and the more respectable laymen among them, wear a round cap of the same material, which is secured to the head by a small turban. All the men keep their hair close shaven, with the exception of two long locks on the crown, which are plaited with no little care, and in some cases suffered to hang down the back. The costume of the females is not unlike that which has already been described as worn by other eastern ladies, except in this, that they always go unveiled, and their head-dress consists of a simple muslin kerchief, thrown over the hair, and tied behind the neck.

Mechanics are in a very backward state among the mountain Nestorians: their carpentry is of the most clumsy description,