_April 28._--News more and more disastrous. The inundation has swept away 7,000 houses from one end of the city to the other, burying the sick, the dying, and the dead, with many of those in health, in one common grave.[28] Those who have escaped, have brought their goods and the relics of their families, to the houses the plague has desolated, or desertion left unoccupied, and houses are yet falling in every direction. [28] I have heard of eight thus buried in one house, or rather belonging to one family, the remains of which are come to reside next us in a house, where those who had the charge of it are dead. The Lord has stopped the water just at the top of our street by a little ledge of high ground, so that as yet we are dry; and all free from the sword of the destroying angel. Scarcity of provision is beginning to be sensibly felt, so that very respectable persons are coming to the door to beg a little bread, or a little 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.