TTBHJ THE AMERICAN MISSION 221

NOTES OK PEOTESTANT MISSIONS IN UEMI1

A SKETCH of Urmi would present few features of general
interest if it did not embrace an outline of the mission
work which is carried on there on a large scale, first by
the numerous agents, lay and clerical, male and female,
of the American Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions,
and next by the English Mission clergy and the Sisters
of Bethany, who form what is known as " The Archbishop
of Canterbury's Mission to the Assyrian Christians."

Besides these there is a Latin Mission of French
Lazarists, aided by Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, which
has been at work in Urmi and on the plain of Salmas
for forty years.

Urmi, the reputed birthplace of Zoroaster, and in past
ages the great centre of Fire "Worship, was made the head-
quarters of the American Mission to the Nestorians in
1834, which, with the exception of the C. M. S. Mission in
Julfa, was the only Protestant Mission in Persia up to
the year 1885.

At present there are four ordained American mission-
aries, several ladies, and a medical missionary working
in Urmi. Under their superintendence are thirty
ordained and thirty-one licentiate pastors, ninety-three
native helpers, and three Bible-women. The number of
Nestorians or Syrians employed as teachers in the

1 The name of the town and lake is spelt variously Urmi, Urami,
Ummiya, Ourmia, and Oroomiah. The Moslems call itUrumi, and the
Christians Urmi, to which spelling I have adhered.