_May 5._--In my journal yesterday, I mention more than half the population as having been swept away in the inconceivably short space of two months, but every account I have received, convinces me that this is within the number; certainly not less than two thirds have been swept away, and this seems to have arisen from a complication of causes. At the time when the great mass of the population would have fled, and thus have thinned the city, the waters rose so high, that they could move only with great difficulty; they waited in the hopes of the water subsiding, instead of which, it so increased, that those who had left the town and could get back, were compelled to return; those who could not, were driven to seek some high ground where they might remain safe from the water, but in all cases they were crowded together without the power of moving their position.--Again, in the city, when by the death of immense multitudes the population became greatly thinned, the inundation of the water laid more than half the town level with the ground, and drove the remaining people to congregate together wherever they could find a dry place or an open house, so that often twenty or thirty came to reside together in the same house, as was the case next door to us; thus again the deaths became awfully great. Inquire where you will, the answer is, The city is desolate: around the Pasha four Georgians alone remain alive out of more than one hundred. The son of our Moolah, who is dead, told me to-day, that in the quarter where he lives, not one human being is left--they are all dead. Out of about eighteen servants and seapoys that Major T. left, fourteen are dead, two have now the plague,[29] and two remain well. Among the Armenians, more than half are dead. An Armenian who was with us to-day, tells us, there are not more than twenty-seven men left in one hundred and thirty houses. I, however, think that this is exaggerated. [29] Those two died. At Hillah, the modern Babylon, (population 10,000), there is, Seyd Ibrahim told me to-day, scarce a soul left, and the dogs and the wild beasts alone are there feeding on the dead bodies. This Seyd Ibrahim is one of the surviving servants of Major T.; and is the only one of a family of fourteen who remains alive.--His four brothers, their wives, his own wife, their children, and his own, are all dead. If mystical Babylon is suffering, as the seat of this Archbishopric of the literal Babylon, the times are not far off when the river Euphrates shall be dried up for the kings of the east to pass over. For digging a grave they ask a sum that equals in England three pounds, in consequence of which numbers have remained unburied about the streets, so that the Pasha has been obliged to engage men, paying them at the same rate for each body they will throw into the river.