butter, or some
other simple necessary of life. To-day, the number dying in the road
was much greater than I have before seen, and the number unburied in
the streets daily and hourly increases. The Seroy of the Pasha is a
heap of ruins, and though he is most anxious to go, he cannot collect
forty men to man the yacht, for all fear of him is now past, and love
for him they have none; his distress beggars all description, for not
a single native vessel is left in Bagdad, every one having been
employed in taking down the crowds to Bussorah at the commencement of
this dreadful calamity. I have from day to day mentioned the dead
taken from the eight houses opposite to ours; that number has to-day
reached twenty-four; in one of these, out of nine, one only survives;
and I mention twenty-four not as all, but as those which have been
seen carried out by some of the schoolmaster's family, who were
however very little in that room which overlooks this passage. Of
another family near the Meidan, out of thirteen one only remains, and
I have no doubt there are hundreds of families similarly swept away;
yet amidst all these trials to the servants of God, my heart does not
despair for the work of the Lord, for no ordinary judgments seem
necessary to break the pride and hatred of this most proud and
contemptuous people; but the Lord will bring Edom down, and make a way
for the Kings of the East to his holy habitation. We have taken one
poor little Mohammedan baby, about three or four years old, from the
streets, and are supplying a poor Armenian woman with pap for another;
but what is this among so many? We know not what to do. It makes
passing the streets most painful and affecting, thus to see little
children from a month or six weeks, to two or four years, crying for a
home, hungry, and naked, and wretched, and knowing not what to do, nor
where to go. Thank God however, to-day the water is a little abated,
about a span lower. Oh, may the Lord's mercy spare yet a little longer
this wretched, wretched city. Oh, how does the glory of the Chalifat
lie in ashes; she seems within a step of falling like her elder sister
Babylon, the glory of the Chaldean's excellency, and in how many
things has her spirit towards the church of God been as bad, yea
worse, than hers. Missionaries in these countries have need of a very
simple faith, which can glory in God's will being done, though all
their plans come to nothing. It was but the other day we we