son of the late governor of Kermanshah; and on the other, the king's troops had to be dispersed on account of the ravages which the cholera was making amongst them. That disease appeared this year for the first time in Persia, and is said to have carried away one hundred thousand victims, but this number must be set down as a mere guess, since no mortuary statistics are kept in the Shah's dominions.
At another part the frontier was disturbed by an inroad made by the Kurds of the mountains upon the peaceful Christians of the district of Salmas, six thousand of whom are said to have been on this occasion put to death. In this portion of the kingdom of Persia, there is a Nestorian population of about thirty thousand persons, five thousand of whom dwell in the mountains, and twenty-five thousand in the plain of Uroomeeah, gaining their livelihood almost exclusively by the cultivation of the soil. Their landlords supply them with grain seeds, and when the harvest is reaped two-thirds of it are retained by the owner, while the remaining third is made over to the ryot. But under various pretexts a considerable portion of the cultivator's substance is extorted from him by the rapacious landowner, who is sufficiently powerful in the support of his mountain border clansmen, and sufficiently far removed from the seat of government at Tehran, to treat with indifference the orders which are sent from time to time by the Shah for the just and equitable treatment of his Christian subjects. It must be added that the arbitrary exactions levied on the Nestorians are not dictated by prejudice against their religion, but are in a great measure the same as those practised upon Mahomedan cultivators at a distance
