Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/87

Rh was quite cold, and a light frost lay upon the ground. In two hours we left the great Bitlis road, and three miles onward reached the Coordish village of Kara Ahmet, where we halted to wait for our baggage mules. Here we saw two Coords washing a still-born child; after washing it they laid the corpse on a large copper dish, and then sprinkled its knees and other parts of the body with fine tobacco, the object of which I could not learn. Soon after leaving Kara Ahmet, we again forded the Tigris, which is here very sluggish in its course, and continued our route over the plains, passing several villages and rivulets, which I have noted in the map, and at 4, put up at the large village of Coordirek, situated near a pleasant stream bordered with poplars, willows, and mulberry trees. The country through which we passed is inhabited almost exclusively by Coords, who cultivate the entire district south of the Tigris as far as the borders of the Arabian desert. On the whole they treated us with much civility, for a due share of which we were doubtless indebted to the presence of the Pasha's Kawass. There are ten Armenian families in this village.

Nov. 29th.—Started from Coordirek at 7, and continued our journey over the offshoots of a high range of hills which the Syrians told us is called Koròs in their books. In two hours we reached Dereesh, another Coordish village, most of the houses of which are built over subterranean caves, some of natural and others of artificial formation. I examined several of these which were unoccupied, and found them to contain a few niches, a rude fire place, and a hole in the roof for a chimney, but not a vestige of any inscription. Before 1 we had crossed the lower chain of hills and began descending into a deep valley, which separates it from the high Koròs range, and through which a pretty stream flows towards the Tigris. The valley smiled with cultivation, pretty orchards surrounded the villages, and numerous rivulets ran through the gardens in every direction. Leaving the Coordish town of Saoor, which is situated on an isolated rock in a gap of the mountains and defended by a ruined castle, to our right, we entered a deep and fertile ravine, which leads through the Koròs, and reached Killeth at 4, where the inhabitants gladly welcomed us, and where we were comfortably lodged in the house of the Kiahya. Killeth