e nephew who was boarding with us, so we are indeed now quite
alone. In fact, nothing prevents the entire desertion of the city, but
the dangers of the way, and the poverty of the inhabitants.

[25] He died afterwards--he was the one mentioned in my
former Journal as having come from Shiraz.

_April 15._--The accounts of the mortality yesterday still more
alarming--1800 deaths in the city. There was great danger of the
bodies being left in the houses, and the inhabitants flying and
leaving them unburied, but by great exertions on the part of some
young men in one quarter of the town to bury the dead there, others
have been stimulated in other quarters to similar exertions, and last
night all were buried. Our Moolah has just been here; he says he has
bought winding sheets for himself, his brother, and his mother.[26] He
says that yesterday he was in the Jew's quarter, and only met one
person, and that was a woman, who, when she saw him, ran in and locked
the door. Meat, for some days, or any thing else from without, we have
been unable to get. Water alone we have obtained. But, to-day, even
that we cannot get at any price; every waterman you stop, answers he
is carrying it to wash the bodies of the dead.

[26] Both he and his brother died.

_April 16._--The accounts of yesterday are worse than any day, and an
Armenian girl, who has been here this morning, said she saw, in a
distance of about 600 yards, fifty dead bodies carrying to burial. The
son of Gaspar Khan, our next neighbour, is dead. Two have been carried
out from a little passage opposite our house to-day, where two more
are ill. All you see passing have a little bunch of herbs, or a rose,
or an onion to smell to, and yet as to real measures of precaution
there has not been one step taken; not even contact avoided, and the
most unrestrained intercourse goes on in every direction, so that
nothing but the Lord's arm shortening it, can prevent the entire
desolation of the whole province. The population of Bagdad cannot
exceed 80,000, and of this number more than half have fled,[27] so
that the mortality of 2000 a-day is going on among considerably less
than 40,000 people. But the Lord tells us, when we hear or see these
things, not to have our hearts troubled, for our redemption draweth
nigh; and we believe it, and accept it as a sweet drop in the bitter
cup that is now drinking to the very dregs by so many about us; and
which, but for this expectation, w