Things in the city are still very dear, arising from the harvest of last year not having been reaped, and various other causes. We have to pay three times the usual price for most things; but after such tremendous visitations as we have suffered, we cannot expect that things can return to their usual course in a day.
_Oct. 22._--I have had with me to-day a gentleman who was formerly attached to Mr. Morier's mission in Persia. He fled from the plague at Tabreez, and arrived at Kermanshah four days after dear brother Pfander left it, who, by his conversations in the caravan, had left so distinct an impression, that he thought Mohammed a liar, that when he reached Kermanshah, he found his situation very difficult, nay dangerous, and he was obliged hastily to quit it. He went to Hamadan, and remained there three days in the house of a priest, from whence he proceeded to Ispahan. All the villages between Hamadan and Ispahan are Armenian. The journey takes about ten days. When he arrived at Ispahan, Abbas Meerza being at Yezd, he went there, was treated with great honour and respect, and a firman given him to go where he liked: he returned to Ispahan, and from thence went to Tabreez, which place he reached before the plague broke out the second time. This account makes me long to hear from his own pen the course of the Lord's dealings with him. The same gentleman told me that the plague in Tabreez was much worse the second than the first time. Kermanshah is absolutely destroyed, and the governor, a grandson of the king, is reported to have collected from the property of the dead five lacs of piasters. In Kourdistan, also, they say it has been dreadful. In Saggas, Banah, and Sulemania, he says the desolation is shocking. How wonderful God's visitations on these nations are; it makes the soul that the Lord has appointed to be in the midst of them often say, Lord, let thy kingdom come; yea, speedily, that thy people may know peace and safety.
I have sent to see the number of the poor little boys of my school that remain, and I find that they amount to 25 out of 80, and that I may expect near 30, should I get a master for them. I shall, therefore, endeavour to accomplish this, the Lord enabling me, and when I feel strong enough to begin again.