Mar Shimun's other counsellor was an Englishman of most exceptional character; the late Doctor William Browne, of the "Archbishop's Mission;" who for twenty-five years lived in this remote village as adviser and friend of this Church, and of two successive Patriarchs in it. In spirit a devoted fifth-century hermit, who somehow was born in nineteenth-century England, he applied himself whole-heartedly to the care of the Nestorian Church and its members, as their teacher, healer, and at times rebuker. He lived their life with them, and now sleeps in their midst. Many of the memories of one of the most picturesque and romantic of modern lives were lost irrevocably at his accidental death in 1910; but one or two which the writer received from him are worth inserting, as throwing light both on the conditions under which he lived, and on the character of the man himself.
In January and February of the year 1900, the news of the "Black Week" in South Africa in the previous December filtered slowly through the glens of Kurdistan. Mr. Browne (as he then was) was in his room in the village of Qudshanis, when two visitors were announced; deacons of the Church both, and good friends of their host. In they came, appearing fully armed and equipped for a journey.
"Peace be to you, deacons," said the Englishman, "Are you going on a journey at this season?"
"Upon you be peace Rabbi," came the answer; "Could you tell us the way to South Africa?"
"To South Africa? Why on earth do you want to go there?"
"Well, Rabbi, we owe a good deal to you English; it seems from what we hear that you fellows don't understand fighting behind rocks. Now we do know _that_ here in Hakkiari if we know nothing else, and we thought we ought to go and help."
They would certainly have been a picturesque reinforcement for Lord Roberts; but it came out on inquiry that there really was no way of getting to Africa without crossing the ocean, a prospect far more dreadful than battling with any number of Boers; and so the volunteers returned regretfully to their homes.
The "debt which they owed to the English," by the way, was principally the service rendered to their nation by Stratford Canning in 1847; when he insisted on the restoration of the children stolen as slaves by the Kurds under Bedr Khan Beg, the Mira of Bohtan, who perpetrated a fearful massacre of these mountaineers in that year. The return of those who had been given up as dead (and who were brought back in some cases from Aleppo and Smyrna) made a deep impression on the people, and has never been forgotten since.