_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, would 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.