ould bow down the stoutest heart.

[27] Most of them were driven back by the increase of the
waters without.

One of Major T.'s servants has just been here, who says the city is a
perfect desert, only peopled by the dead, the bearers of the dead, and
the water carriers. Our household are all in perfect health, thanks be
to our loving Shepherd's care.

_April 17._--To-day, as yesterday, we have heard nothing as to
numbers. The accounts are very contradictory; some saying that there
is very little plague, others, that it is heavier than any day; so
that probably, in some parts of the city, it is very severe, and in
others lighter.

An Armenian told the schoolmaster that almost every one you meet is
carrying cotton and things for the interment of the dead. We are
left almost alone in our own neighbourhood, all having fled in one
direction or another; we have been, however, all preserved in health,
to the praise of the Keeper of Israel.

Surely every principle of dissolution is operating in the midst of the
Ottoman, and Persian empires. Plagues, earthquakes, and civil wars,
all mark that the days of the Lord's coming are at hand, and this is
our hope--on this our eyes and hearts rest as the time of repose, when
all these trials shall cease, and the saints shall possess the
kingdom.

_April 18._--To-day the accounts are truly distressing. In the family
of one of our little boys, consisting of six, four are laid down with
the plague, father, mother, one son, and one daughter--only one son
and a daughter remaining. Immense numbers of families will be
altogether swept away, and many thousand of fatherless and motherless
children left when this heavy judgment of God ceases. It is now become
useless to attempt obtaining accurate accounts about numbers.

_April 19._--Still heavy, heavy news. The Moolah has called to give us
an account of the city. He says it now stands stationary at between
1,500 and 2,000 a-day, and has been so for a fortnight. What a mass of
mortality! Among the Pasha's soldiers, he says they have lost, in some
of the regiments, above 500 out of 700.--And in the towns and villages
without, the report is, that it is as bad or worse than within the
city.

_April 20._--The plague much the same. Among the Armenians nine were
buried yesterday, and seven to-day. There are not left in the city
more than 400, and now there is the plague in every third or fourth
house. The water also is increasing, so that