Chapter 9

The Pasha has sent to desire, that he might have Major T----'s yacht drawn up near the Seroy or Palace to go into, in case the water should increase; and when the man was sent for, who had the charge of the vessel, he with another had run away, three were dead, and only one remained. These are surely the days of visitation for the pride of Edom. The man who sold cotton for burying the dead, the price of which he raised from 45 to 95 piastres, and who lived only two doors from us, died yesterday. There is no more cotton left in the city, and they now bury the dead in their clothes. The price of soap is raised four times higher than usual. I have been enabled, by the Lord's goodness, to get all our water-jars filled, though at twenty times the usual price. The bodies of persons of considerable wealth are now just put on the back of a donkey, or a mule, and carried away to be buried, accompanied by one servant. We have also much anxiety about the people of the Damascus-caravan, of which we can hear no tidings, whether or not they have been swallowed up by the inundation. Whether they have been able to retreat to some eminence, or what is become of them we know not. The poor women who have taken charge of the two poor little infants have sent to us for food for them, as in these countries they have no idea of bringing up children by hand. It may be to be instrumental in saving some of these poor little infants, and in helping the orphans that remain, that the Lord has allowed us to stay here. They are all Mohammedan children.

_April 26._--For many days we have been unable to obtain any account of the number of deaths; but the _Chaoush_ of Major T---- has been with the Pasha this morning, who is in the greatest possible state of alarm, wishing to go, but not knowing how. One of his officers, whose business it is to inquire about the number of deaths daily, reported that it had reached 5,000, but yesterday was 3,000, and to-day less. Enormous as the mortality has been, I cannot but think this beyond the truth; yet it must be remembered, that the inundation kept immense masses of poor thronged together in the city, who, but for this, would have all fled in one direction or another.

The accounts are heart-rending of little children left in the streets; five were left yesterday, a poor woman told us, near the Residency, and others in different directions. If the wrath of God is pouring out on the mystical Babylon, as it is on this province of the literal Babylon; the two antichrists are beginning to draw near their end. But for the presence of the Lord in our dwelling, as its light and joy, what a place would this be to be alone in now; but with Him, even this is better than the garden of Eden. These are invaluable situations for the experience of God's loving distinguishing care, and here we realize our pilgrim state much better than in the quiet of England, with all its external apparent security.

The utmost number of daily deaths I heard of at Tabreez were 400, and here it is said to be 4,000, and yet the population certainly is not double. In going out to speak with a servant of Major T----, I saw a very decently dressed female lying in a dying state of plague at our door quite senseless; it is almost more than the heart can bear. Yet, that the Lord will even from these scenes prepare ways for the establishment of his truth, I feel fully assured, and this supports us. A north wind has regularly blown for these four days past, so that we hope the water will not again increase. Oh, may our Father of his infinite mercy take away these heavy heavy judgments, and make their present measure instrumental to the advancement of his kingdom. The Soochee Bashee, an officer of police, has just been here, and tells us, that the Pasha proposes removing to near Coote, a village on the Tigris, half way between this and Bussorah. At any other time, this would tend to most fearful convulsions within the city; but in the present state of things, perhaps, all may remain quiet, without a governor. When the plague, that now desolates the city ceases, we know not what may happen; but this we do know, that the love of our Father, and his gracious providence, will be magnified by all events, and that we shall yet praise him more and more. It seems to me more than probable that the Pasha does not intend to return. By the plague he has lost half his soldiers, and a great number of his Georgian slaves, who are his personal attached friends; he may now remove without obstruction perhaps, from any one, or the possibility of any communication being made to his enemies to intercept him; but time only will show; however this may be, it is certain that should the plague cease to-morrow, the city is in such a state, that no resistance could be made for one moment to any enemy. How invaluable the past proofs of the Lord's loving kindness and tender mercies are at such times, the remembrance of him from the Hill Mizar of the Hermonites. In going along the streets to-day, I saw several poor sufferers labouring under the plague; and a number of places, where clothes had been brought out and burnt.

Our anxieties have been greatly increased by the illness of our dear little baby; but our unerring Physician has restored her to us to-day, we trust in a measure which promises amendment.

_April 27._--To-day all thoughts are turned from the plague to the inundation, which from the falling of a portion of the city wall on the north-west side last night, let the water in full stream into the city. The Jews' quarter is inundated, and 200 houses fell there last night: we are hourly expecting to hear, that every part of the city is overflowed. A part also of the wall of the citadel is fallen. And, in fact, such is the structure of the houses, that if the water remains near the foundations long, the city must become a mass of ruins. The mortar they use in building is very like plaister of Paris, which sets very hard, and does very well when all is dry; but as soon as ever water is applied, it all crumbles to powder; and in building walls of four or five feet thick, they have only an outside casing of brick work thus cemented, and within it is filled up with dust and rubbish, so that what seems strong enough in appearance to bear any thing, soon moulders away, and by its own weight accelerates its ruin. It must be many many years, if ever, before the city can recover. But it seems to me, that this seat of Mohammedan glory, and of its proudest recollections, has received its death-warrant from the hand of the Lord. This inundation has not only ruined an immense number of houses in the city, and been the cause of tens of thousands dying of the plague, but the whole harvest is destroyed. The barley, which was just ready to be reaped, is utterly gone, and every other kind of corn must likewise be ruined, so that for 30 miles all round Bagdad, not a grain of corn can be collected this year, and perhaps, if all was quiet this might be of no consequence, for from Mosul and Kourdistan it might easily come; but this will be prevented by the enemies of the Pasha who surround us. The poor are beginning to feel immense difficulty in the city, for all the shops are shut, and there is a great scarcity of wood for firing; and should the water now cause a general inundation of the whole city, the heart sickens at the contemplation of the scenes that must follow; for the houses of the poor are nothing but mud, scarcely one of which will be left standing.

For ourselves personally, the Lord has allowed us great peace, and assured confidence in his loving care, and in the truth of his promise, that our bread and our water shall be sure; but certainly nothing but the service of such a Lord as he is would keep me in the scenes which these countries do exhibit, and I feel assured will, till the Lord has finished his judgments on them, for the contempt of the name, nature, and offices of the Son of God; yet I linger in the hope he has a remnant even among them, for whose return these convulsions are preparing the way.

_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. Oh, how does the glory of the Chalifat lie in ashes; she seems within a step of falling like her elder sister Babylon, the glory of the Chaldean's excellency, and in how many things has her spirit towards the church of God been as bad, yea worse, than hers. Missionaries in these countries have need of a very simple faith, which can glory in God's will being done, though all their plans come to nothing. It was but the other day we were surrounded by as interesting a school of boys, and a commencing one of thirteen girls, as the heart could desire; and now if the plague and desolation were to terminate to-morrow, and our scattered numbers were assembled, perhaps not more than half would remain to us. Yet dark as all the labours of the Lord's servants in these countries appears, I feel assured, that prophecy points them out as specially connected with many of the great events of the latter days. Yet it requires great confidence in God's love, and much experience of it, for the soul to remain in peace, stayed on him, in a land of such changes, without even one of our own nation near us, without means of escape in any direction; surrounded with the most desolating plague and destructive flood, with scenes of misery forced upon the attention which harrow up the feelings, and to which you can administer no relief. Even in this scene however, the Lord has kept us of his infinite mercy, in personal quiet and peace, trusting under the shadow of his Almighty wing, and has enabled us daily to offer up to his holy name praise, for suffering us to assemble in undiminished numbers, when tens of thousands have been falling around us. Neither is this all, for he has made us know why we staid in this place, and why we were never allowed to feel it to be our path of duty to leave the post we were in.

_April 29._--Our situation is becoming daily still more extraordinary, and in many respects more trying, except that our Lord is our hiding place, who will preserve us from trouble, and will compass us about with songs of deliverance. The Pasha has fled, accompanied by his master of the horse, and his immediate family. His palace is left open, without a soul to take care of any thing. His stud of beautiful Arab horses are running about the streets, and are caught by those who care to take the trouble, and offered for sale for from £10. to £100. each; his stores also of corn are left open, and every one takes what he wants, or what he can carry away, which is a great relief to the poor, for the quantities are enormous, in expectation of a siege.

The plague is working its destructive way, apparently with no other mitigation than that arising from decreasing numbers in the city; the inundation however, has prevented this having its full weight, for it has thronged the remaining population into a compass unnaturally disproportionate. The house next us, which belongs to a Seyd, who left it at the beginning of the plague, in charge of two servants who are dead, is now filled by twenty persons from different directions. The unburied dead, and the dying, are fearfully accumulating in the streets. So difficult it is now to find persons to bury, that even the priest of the Armenian church here, who died two days since, remains yet unburied.

The water, thank God, is a little lower, but there seems now every prospect that the moment the waters decrease, the surrounding Arabs will come in, and plunder the city; yet even this is in the Lord's hands--our wisdom has ever been to sit still, and see the salvation of our God, and until we see his cloudy pillar arise from off our tabernacle, where we feel it has hitherto rested, and move forward, we shall yet judge our safety to be to sit still. We have in several instances seen, that there was reason to bless God for remaining quiet. We once thought of removing to the Residency, as a change to the dear children, and as being nearer to the water; but still on the whole we felt it best to remain here; and had we gone, we should have been in the midst of the plague; or had we gone, when the T----s went to Bussorah, what a state should we now be in, without the possibility of removing, and in danger of our lives from the inundation and falling of the walls, if we stayed.

We had again considered, whether it would be right to leave this with the caravan for Damascus and Aleppo, which seemed the only opening there might possibly be for us, so that if we let that pass by, we must stay whether we would or not; still the Lord made us feel it was our path to stay looking to him. And had we gone, what a state should we have been in? For nearly three weeks they have been surrounded with water, continually increasing around them, so that now we know not what their situation may be, whether they are swept away, or remain; but at all events we bless God for having inclined our minds to stay. Why we did not join our dear and kind friends the T----s, in going to Bussorah, we do not yet so clearly see the reason of, because we have received no accounts thence, but it would have cut up alike our connection with our work here, and with our dear friends at Aleppo, with whom we feel it daily of more and more importance to have as speedy a meeting as possible for advice and counsel.

We have just heard of the caravan already mentioned, as going to Damascus and Aleppo. The plague has taken off eight of the Armenians, and four have been drowned. The head of the caravan is dead of the plague also, besides many others; they must therefore return to Bagdad, instead of advancing on their journey; so in this instance at least we see great reason to bless God for keeping us back. Yea, the Lord will instruct us and teach us the way in which we should go, and will guide us with his eye; this is our confidence and comfort; and in such a time as this of unheard of perplexity, what a source of abiding peace is this. We feel it well to know our God in such circumstances as ours. Among the Armenians, thirteen died to-day, the largest number yet in one day.

_April 30._--The report of the flight of the Pasha, it appears was not true, and arose from the two circumstances I have mentioned, of his horses having been seen running about the streets, and his supplies being open to the people. He has been for several days endeavouring to get away, and had drawn up for that purpose some boats under the Seroy. All his stables were levelled to the ground, and the place flooded with water. When the distress of the people was mentioned to him, he ordered one of his corn stores to be opened to them. However, to-day, blessed be God's Holy Name, _the waters have sunk more than a yard_, so we trust the great danger is over.

To-day, one more was brought out dead from the eight opposite houses, making twenty-five, and we know there are four more lying ill there. Our poor schoolmaster, who went in the caravan, is dead, and was buried in his tent.

_May 1._--The Lord has brought us all in safety to the beginning of another month, through the most trying period of my life; yet the Lord has every day filled our mouth with praise, and enabled us to see his preserving hand.

To-day, as I passed along the street, I saw numbers of dead bodies lying unburied, and the dogs eating with avidity the loathsome food. Oh! it made my very heart sink. The numbers of the dead can now be no longer ascertained, for most of the bodies are buried either in the houses or in the roads; yet amidst all this, the Lord suffers not the destroying angel to enter our dwelling; but we feel the Lord has commanded the man with the ink-horn to write us down to be spared, as this is one of the vials of God's wrath on his enemies.

_May 2._--We have heard nothing to-day to vary the general scene of our calamities; the intensity of this most desolating disease surpasses all thought. Numbers of families are altogether swept away; in numerous others, out of ten or twelve, only one, two, or three remain; but I hear of none, save our own, where death has not entered. Yet, while I bless and praise the Holy Name of our Lord, under whose wing alone we came here, and under whose wing alone we have trusted, the things my eyes have seen, and my ears heard, press upon my heart, and make me at times very sad; neither can I chase them from my mind. I can only look forward for comfort to that day, when the Lord himself will come to put an end to this dispensation of desolation, and introduce his own peace. Yea, come Lord Jesus, come quickly.

We have just heard melancholy tidings of another caravan, which endeavoured to escape into Persia from the plague, but has been forced back again by the Arabs, the floods, and the scarcity of provisions, and besides numbers among them have died daily of the plague, so still we can bless God we did not leave our present position by this last opportunity. Let us then again bless him for not allowing us to make haste.

_May 3._--To-day we trust the Lord has a little alleviated the virulence of the plague; many attacked yesterday, and the day before, have been rapidly recovering, and fewer deaths have taken place to-day--a great deal so far as we can ascertain. May God's holy name be praised, who is a hiding place from every storm. We had our water jars filled again to-day, when many, even of the rich, who have connections in every direction, find the greatest difficulty. "Your water shall be sure." We who are alone, and without a friend within hundreds of miles in any direction, have been supplied by our Lord's gracious ordering; thus he puts a new song into our mouths, even a song of thanksgiving. To-day all are well, even our dear little baby is quite recovered.

_May 4._--The weather has for these two or three days past been beautifully fine, and clear, and hot, by which our God seems to have mitigated the symptoms of the plague. All accounts to-day are encouraging; the number of new cases few, and the number of those recovering many. Our eyes have also been rejoiced by the sight of three or four water-carriers passing again, after an interval of ten days; many more people have also been passing and repassing than before; so we trust the Lord is now taking away this desolating judgment, which, in less than two months, has carried away 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.