The river, which does not ordinarily rise until the month of June, now rose with inconceivable rapidity, preceded by a violent storm, and in a few hours inundated the whole Irâk. Numberless villages of matted huts were swept away; men, women, and children, were in a moment rendered houseless; numerous cattle and sheep were drowned; date trees torn up by the roots, and boats swamped or stranded. The artificial banks of the river, which had governed our progress upwards, were now overflowed, and it was with the greatest difficulty we could discover the river's bed and escape getting aground. (At Bussorah.) Intelligence of the approach of the plague had spread consternation throughout the city, and had sent thousands of its inhabitants into retreat. The shops were closed--trade at a stand--the streets deserted--houses tenantless--the oft busy creek had scarcely a boat moving on its surface--the mosques were filled with the dismayed Moslems, whom poverty or self-interest had kept in the town--the Christian churches held the few Armenians and Chaldeans whom fear had driven to pray with sincerity. Here might be seen a cluster of Zobeir Arabs, meditating rapine: and there a straggling Jew, ruminating on the losses he had sustained by the flight of the panic-stricken slaves of his usury. Aga Pharseigh had lost all his confidence and self-sufficiency. He had sent off his family to Bushire; he was himself to sink into the humble office of clerk to the resident; and he was (which he esteemed the most distressing event of the three) to encounter face to face those who had just left the "city of the plague." I had told him of the circumstances under which I had met the resident, (coming from Bagdad,) and that there were three cases of plague on board. The Armenian, whose only notions regarding _cases_ were acquired in the course of his mercantile transactions, and who believed a plague case and a six dozen champagne case to be much about the same article, ejaculated, "Three _cases_ of plague! Merciful heavens!--if the major wanted to preserve such abominable virus, could he not have brought a smaller quantity? Three cases! If it _should_ run out, how it might spread about the town!" (The "divinity" of the sheikh of the Chabeans is worth record. He was pleased with Mr. Stocqueler's medical zeal, and more so with a box of ointment which he laid "at his feet as a certain remedy for the _impaired vision_ of his left eye. He had been stone blind from his childhood, but he held it disrespectful to be told so." The levee of the sheikh of Fellahi is amusing.)