here that, in May, 1846, Miss Fiske narrowly escaped a watery grave.
On her way to Seir, with Mr. and Mrs. Stoddard, the horse lay down
in the middle of the river, leaving her to be swept off by the rapid
current. Mr. Stoddard hastened to the rescue; but the moment his
steed was loose, he rushed to attack the horse of Mrs. Stoddard,
and, as Miss Fiske rose to the surface, she caught a glimpse of Mr.
Stoddard looking back on the battle, and his wife held between the
combatants by her riding habit, which had caught on the saddle; but
while she looked the dress gave way, and Mrs. Stoddard was safe. She
herself had sufficient presence of mind not to breathe under water,
and, on coming up for the fifth time, floated into shallow water
near the opposite shore, forty rods below the ford, just as Mr.
Stoddard reached the same point.

From the river, beautiful orchards line the road on both sides to
the city gate, of which a representation is given on page 154; and
about one eighth of a mile inside of that, where the Nestorian and
Moslem sections of the city join each other, stand the mission
premises, built of sun-dried bricks, like the houses around them.

They occupy a little more than an acre, in the form of a
parallelogram; and if, for the sake of clearness, we compare it to a
window, the bottom of the lower sash is represented by a long,
earthen-roofed structure, half of it a dwelling house, once the home
of Dr. Grant, but now the dwelling of Dr. Wright. It is the building
on the left of the engraving at page 131, and the round object
occupying the nearest window in the second story is a clock, the
gift of a well-known merchant of Boston, brother of one of our
deceased missionaries. Let our lower sash be filled by two large
panes in modern style, and these are represented by two courts