ay more than
half the population of this city; for, allowing that it had been
silently making its deadly course three weeks before it was
discovered, it does not exceed eight weeks, and by far the greatest
portion of deaths have been within the last four weeks.

_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 s