The Vienna correspondent of the Times sends an interesting account
of the Kurds, derived from a Catholic mission among them. The Kurds are supposed to number from a million to three millions, scattered over the country called Kurdistan, part of Armenia, especially the districts of Diarbekir and Van, and in a south-western direction towards Mosul. They are Mahommedans, and are divided into two castes, the Assireta, who are rapacious and predatory warriors, and the Garzori, who are dependent on them and are quiet cultivators. The Assireta live by robbery and a kind of blackmail levied on Armenians ; have the usual savage virtues—for instance, they will keep a promise made to a guest—and though Mussnlmans, are, as a rule, monogamists, and allow their wives a freedom unusual in Asia. If the Turks were away, they would, we believe, soon find a, moclus vivendi with the Armenians, whom even now some of their chiefs protect, and they would furnish an Armenian Principality with excellent soldiers. It is the Turks who destroy their characters, by alternately chastising them and using them as instruments of oppression.
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