seemed as if the fine barren sand of the mountain torrent would make the paradise a desert for ever. The venerable botanist was wounded in his keenest part, but he lost not an hour in issuing orders and writing off for new supplies of specimens and seeds, which years after made the place as lovely if not so precious, as before. He thus wrote to Dr. Ryland:-- "SERAMPORE, 22nd December 1823. "MY DEAR BROTHER--I once more address you from the land of the living, a mercy which about two months ago I had no expectation of, nor did any one expect it more than, nor perhaps so much as, myself. On the 1st of October I went to Calcutta to preach, and returned with another friend about midnight. When I got out of the boat close to our own premises, my foot slipped and I fell; my friend also fell in the same place. I however perceived that I could not rise, nor even make the smallest effort to rise. The boatmen carried me into the house, and laid me on a couch, and my friend, who was a medical man, examined my hurt.--From all this affliction I am, through mercy, nearly restored. I am still very weak, and the injured limb is very painful. I am unable to walk two steps without crutches; yet my strength is sensibly increasing, and Dr. Mellis, who attended me during the illness, says he has no doubts of my perfect recovery. "During my confinement, in October, such a quantity of water came down from the western hills, that it laid the whole country for about a hundred miles in length and the same in breadth, under water. The Ganges was filled by the flood, so as to spread far on every side. Serampore was under water; we had three feet of water in our garden for seven or eight days. Almost all the houses of the natives in that vast extent of country fell; their cattle were swept away, and the people, men, women, and children. Some gained elevated spots, where the water still rose so high as to threaten them with death; others climbed trees, and some floated on the roofs of their ruined houses. One of the Church missionaries, Mr. Jetter, who had accompanied Mr. Thomason and some other gentlemen to Burdwan to examine the schools there, called on me on his return and gave me a most distressing account of the fall of houses, the loss of property, the violent rushing of waters, so that none, not even the best swimmers, dared to leave the place where they were. "This inundation was very destructive to the Mission house, or rather the Mission premises. A slip of the earth (somewhat like that of an avalanche), took place on the bank of the river near my house, and gradually approached it until only about ten feet of space were left between that and the house; and that space soon split. At last two fissures appeared in the foundation and wall of the house itself. This was a signal for me to remove; and a house built for a professor in the College being empty, I removed to it, and through mercy am now comfortably settled there.