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 a little more will inundate the whole city on this side the river, as it has on the other, to the inexpressible additional misery of the poor people. The caravan which left for Damascus can neither advance nor return on account of the water. Yesterday four dead were carried out from the little passage opposite our house, making in all 14 dead from eight houses, and there are others now lying ill. _April 21._--To-day the accounts of the plague are rather more favourable, though another has been carried out from the passage opposite us, and there are some ill in three houses adjoining ours. The river has burst into the cellars of the Residency, and is within a foot of inundating the whole city.