nd
become a Pasha of the empire. Suleiman Bey was a relative of the
Emir, and had been the leader of the party that murdered Mr.
Schultz. He showed special kindness to Dr. Grant. His mother and
sister, as also the sister and mother of the Patriarch, with womanly
forethought, loaded the Doctor with supplies for the inhospitable
road before them. He found the Emir at Van on his return home, and
discovered what had been the object of his journey to Erzroom. When
Dr. Grant arrived there, with clothes worn and ragged from the
roughness of the journey, he had the happiness of meeting Dr.
Wright, then on his way to Oroomiah. The two brethren called on the
gentlemen of the Persian embassy, then at Erzroom, and one of them,
observing Dr. Grant's erect and commanding person, remarked that a
good soldier was spoiled when that man became a missionary. At
Trebizond he gladly exchanged the saddle for the quiet of the
steamer, which took him to Constantinople, and he arrived at Boston
on the 3d of October.

Having embraced the theory, that the Nestorians are descendants of
the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, Dr. Grant, with characteristic
industry, employed such time as he could command during his
missionary travels and his homeward voyage, in preparing a volume in
support of these views. It was published both in this country and in
England, and attracted considerable attention. The celebrated Dr.
Edward Robinson deemed it deserving of an elaborate discussion in
the "American Biblical Repository," in which he makes a strong
argument against the theory.1

1 See _American Biblical Repository_, 1841, vol. vi. of new series,
pp. 454-482, and vol. vii. pp. 26-68.

In January, 1841, Dr. Grant had the pleasure of witnessing the
departure of the Rev. Messrs. Abel K. Hinsdale and Colby C.
Mitchell, and their wives, for the Mountain Nestorians. They went by
way of Aleppo and Mosul, that being the more practicable route for
females; but the Doctor, thinking to reach the mountains before
them, and prepare for their arrival, went himself by way of
Constantinople, Erzroom, and Van. He was at Constantinople May 14th,
and at Van on the first day of July. The journey from Erzroom to
that place was wearisome and perilous, famine, the plague, and
predatory Koords harassing him nearly all the way.

Van, with fourteen thousand Armenian population, though at that time
difficult of access, was even then regarded as an important place
for a missionary stat